[Haskell-cafe] Re: Health effects

[Jon Fairbairn]

Achim Schneider <barsoap at web.de> writes:

> Jon Fairbairn <jon.fairbairn at cl.cam.ac.uk> wrote:
>
>> Adrian Neumann <aneumann at inf.fu-berlin.de> writes:
>> 
>> > I often wonder how many cuts you need to divide a steak in n
>> > pieces.  You can obviously get n pieces with (sqrt n) cuts
>> > by cutting a grid.  But I'm sure some smart mathematician
>> > thought of a (log n) way.
>> 
>> Are you allowed to move the pieces between cuts?
>>
> Later you're also going to demand to bend it in N dimensions, aren't
> you?

I don't know about you, but I demand that my steaks have at
least four dimensions (in particular they should be much
larger in the fourth than an éclair), but as to bending, no,
to get to log n you wouldn't need that. If you allow it to
be arbitrarily bendable, you can do it in one cut, except
that I imagine there's an unstated requirement that 

all (map ((<size mouth) . size) pieces)

and I'm not sure you can manage that with one straight cut.

-- 
Jón Fairbairn                                 Jon.Fairbairn at cl.cam.ac.uk