What is the best way to lace your shoes? Dream proof.
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 17 พ.ค. 2024
- A blast from the past. A video about my fun quest to pin down the best ways of lacing mathematical shoes from almost 20 years ago. Lots of pretty and accessible math. Includes a proof that came to me in a dream (and that actually worked)!
0:00 Intro
1:31 What's a mathematical lacing?
4:42 What does "best" mean?
5:15 What is the shortest lacing? Crisscross and bowtie lacings.
8:42 How to prove that the shortest are the shortest? Travelling salesman problem
12:36 What are the longest lacings? Devil and angel lacings.
13:48 What about real lacings?
15:16 What are the strongest lacings?
17:17 Can proofs hatched in dreams be true?
Some links:
Ian's shoelace site
www.fieggen.com/shoelace
and his explanations of what's wrong with the way a lot of people tie their shoelaces
www.fieggen.com/shoelace/gran...
John Halton's proof that the crisscross lacing is always the shortest tight lacings
Halton, J.H. The shoelace problem. The Mathematical Intelligencer 17 (1995), 37-41
www.cs.unc.edu/techreports/92-...
My shoelace article in Nature
www.nature.com/articles/42047...
A preview of my shoelace book at Google books
books.google.com.au/books?id=...
Here is a page on the German travelling salesman problem that I mention in the video
www.math.uwaterloo.ca/tsp/d15s...
I actually got the number of cities a bit wrong. It's 15,112 cites and not 18000.
My article on shoelaces was inspired by this fun article by Thomas Fink and Yong Mao about Designing tie knots by random walks (also in Nature)
www.tcm.phy.cam.ac.uk/~ym101/...
The extended version
www.tcm.phy.cam.ac.uk/~tmf20/...
They also wrote a really nice book about tie knots
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_85_...
Enjoy!
Burkard
When dealing with actual shoes what goes commonly overlooked is the order in which the laces overlap at the intersection. It matters immensely. For experiment tie your shoe with standard zigzag but make sure every overlap lays right over left. Walk around for a day and then try again with overlaps left over right now. You'll notice they pull vastly differently on the foot. The lace overlapping the other lace is free to adjust slightly while pinning down other down restricting its movement. I have a bony knuckle top cent of my feet so I make sure the overlaps at this spot are laced a certain way. It's so much more comfortable than overlapped the other way. All this while never changing the actual layout of the lacing.
Absolutely right, there are lots of other considerations that go into optimising something as seemingly trivial as lacing and tying your shoes. While I was obsessing about this material I did come across a lot of other interesting insights. Definitely also check out Ian's site :)
I just keep a mirror symmetry between my shoes XD
@@Mathologer isnt the number of tight lacings just the number of eyelet pairs or twice the number pf eyelet pairs?
@@VaradMahashabde It's too much hassle to mirror the knots and bows, so I tie both shoes the same way. Thus, it makes more sense to lace them the same way too, rather than mirrored. If the lacing is mirrored but the knot is not, it's what we call "not elegant".
@@JohnDlugosz
You don't mirror the knot?
Am i really watching a 29 min video at 3am about the best way to tie your shoe laces ?
YES.
Y E S
It's a perfect time to watch such a video.
You can draw your conclusions over night and directly apply them the next morning ^^
No, and nor am I...
Mmm, 03:05. Nice way to spend the evening.
Currently, it's 3:14am here and I'm procrastinating - I should be doing maths homework but instead I'm watching Mathologer videos.
Arguably, the best way to procrastinate.
When I was a kid, I created my own lacing, where each eyelet pair had one string going across, out the first eyelet and in the corresponding one, and that was all that was visible - no diagonal lacings. Everything else was under the eyelets and did not cross, and were thus invisible. I was very proud of it. I still lace my shoes with this style.
What a crazy first half of the year! Pretty much did not have any time for anything but trying to survive the first semester here in Australia :( Now, hopefully, with most of my teaching out of the way, I'll have a bit more time for Mathologer in the second half :)
A blast from the past. This is a video about my fun quest to pin down the best ways of lacing mathematical shoes from almost 20 years ago. Lots of pretty and accessible math(s). Includes a proof that came to me in a dream (and that actually worked)!
Enjoy!
Hlo sir ,Is there any relationship between ln(m+n) to[ ln(m) or ln(n)].?
@@Manoj_b hay man what did mean could you elaborate?.I am also very interested in logarithimic
property
@@noone7692 well actually I found a way to expand ln(m+n) to [ln(m) or ln(n)] so, trying to know whether if any existed.?
Manoj Really? Which is it? I’m not aware of any such method, but I’m no expert.
@@Manoj_b whaddya mean by 'or' in the middle of ur expression
As a programmer, I sometimes wake up with "dream functions" lol
I sometimes dream of the halting function that would determine for any machine if it halts or not. Ahhh, such dreams, dreams that will never come true...
@@AgentM124 Sometimes I dream of finding the value of BB(5).
@@xXLanyuzAnlunXx ah yes good ol busy beavers
@@xXLanyuzAnlunXx it's at least 7
how is being a programmer? i have the intention of studying to becone a game designer/programmer and im truly interested into how the programming business and worklife is.
Whenever I feel smart, I watch Mathologer to knock my ego down a few pegs.
This video has what most ML videos lack, that bit of enthusiasm. Glad you can't fake it but this feels like the best ML video I have seen in a long time.
I've been tying the "Ian's knot" ever since 5th grade (roughly 11 years ago) and only today I just found out where the name came from.
I've been using it for about 5 years now and I haven't known it was called Ian's knot. I learned it from Matt Parker.
I've probably been using it for about 10 years and didn't know the name of it either.
I have trouble focusing on any particular youtube video but a full 30-minute nerdout about shoelace math is what grips me to the end. dude, what.
0:06 Just started and I already pressed like for the t-shirt
Where can you get that shirt???:D
@@checkm8606 Try googling "only half evil tshirt" ya lazy ass.
Dark!!
I haven't seen a comment on this yet but the intro with the "o" lacing connecting with the word Mathologer right at the beginning of the video put a smile on my face.
I think I independently discovered the devil lacing when I was weaving my shoelaces so as to use up extra lace length and turn lace-up shoes into slip-ons. With the right goal in mind, it can be the best way to lace up your shoes!
Yes - this is actually a practica onel lacing given the stupidly long laces shoes come with these days.
When I saw Burkard with hair, my head turned into a black hole.
Hole black poogtfgu. Yes he at turtle how house?
Whay
@@madkirk7431 What kind of code is that?
@@ckv1985 Whay 💀
Some elements to consider when defining the best lacing:
- Equally tight at the top in the middle and at the bottom. The X-cross lacing tends to tie tight at the top and not at all at the bottom, when you pull the laces because of the friction at the holes.
- Minimal vertical tightness
especially asymmetrical vertical tension. Here the zag-zag lacing pulls the shoe out of shape.
- Strength at the bottom, in the middle and at the top
- Simplicity to remember
- Aesthetics, symmetry, originality
It seems the best lacing would somehow hold the middle between a x-cross and a zigzag lacing with all the 1 elements facing outwards.
also speed of tightening, number of steps to execute?
So, velcro.
@@Fyreye that would just be the number of holes in yourshoe
>- Equally tight at the top in the middle and at the bottom.
I came here to say this. "Shortest" is not the "best" in my opinion. We have to consider the function of laces, to allow you to slip your foot in, and then tighten the shoe so it is evenly stable on your foot. None of that involves how short a lacing is.
Equal tightness is the most important to me. Second is that the force on the upper pair of holes is low. For shoes without eyelets, that is the weakest part. I use the "loop back" technique. (The lace on the right loops around the lace on the left and then returns to the right. The lace on the left returns to the left.) This forms a little pulley that halves the force on the top holes.
I’d like to add to your two criteria for the “best” lacings: shortest and strongest, please. As I am a sneakerhead and lacing is an intrinsic aspect of one’s “stylishness”, that is a top criterion, though quantifying it might be a matter of subjectivity! Thank you for your studies and presentation 😄👏🏼👌🏼
Definitely check out Ian's site :)
Mathologer thanks!
@@Mathologer Ian's site
I know many people dismiss lacing shoes, but anyone who has put many miles on Shank's Mare can appreciate how important this is.
0:35: "We're always on the lookout for the mathematical sole of things"
Nice cringeworthy one, right ?
Ha-ha.
This channel is an absolute treasure. Even for a smooth brain lump like me.
Only the very best nerds can pull it off to write a book about shoe lacing! Congratulations for that.
Apart from all the extremely beautiful ideas, Your style always makes me happy. Wholesome content.
That "weird" french lacing at 2:09 is the one I've always used and for many years thought everyone else did, too. It is quite surreal to me that the "criss-cross" lacing may be the most common, _especially_ with dress shoes in formal settings.
I have always used that, the advantage is that it is easier to tighten more eyelets with one pull
This is the best video about lacings ever. I love the production, the editing, and the segments. Thanks for the great content!
Wow, this is a great application using math. I also like math modeling myself, and this video is in the same context of my interest so much. Great job and nice explanation!
I was hoping for a crazy and unexpected method that I could start using today but it seems the criss-cross method reigns supreme (probably should have seen that coming). At least I can check out Ian's site and see if there's some other weird tricks to use!
I have shoes where the laces are about half a meter too long. So now I know the best way to keep the laces and be happier with the shoes.
It's mathematically pleasing when the answer is neat and easy
I'm a musician, and I sometimes dream of a new piece of music that sounds wonderful in my dream... and when I wake up, I can't remember it at all. I have a terrible suspicion that my brain is just *telling* me I'm hearing good music in the dream, rather than actually composing it...
Thanks for the link to the Ian's site. I really like the quick release ladder.
You’re adorable, Burkard. Each time I find you here, I see an excited little Boy, speaking of his passion, smiling whilst saying numbers; you’re absolutely beautiful, my dear Friend. Don’t you ever change. I so love your Soul’s most brilliant colours. I spend a lot of time here with you, thank you for the amazing and top calibre Company.
G'day, my old mate and fellow Melburnian!
Fascinating video that's natually right up my alley. A couple of comments:
1. I was surprised that your proof didn't use signed integers to refer to a positive or negative slope. That way, it would be trivial to add up all the signed integers and ensure that the result should equal zero.
2. In the real world, I also have to consider the eyelets as being more than just a node in that it has a distinct entry and exit, one of which is on the inside and the other of which is outside.
3. I liked your optimizations based on the "Travelling Salesman" solution. When I work on lacings with multiple passes through eyelets, I use a similar optimization pass to simplify lacings.
Thanks also for referring folks to my website for the more practical aspects of real-world shoe lacing.
Must agree on the fact that there's math in everything. But an half an hour explanation for just tying shoe laces and a boon as well😳😳
It skips non-optimal lacing choices. Imagine a horizontal line. Now take a string and wrap it around that line once.
Non-optimal lacings loop over or hook on existing laced strings. Kind of like Ian's "weave lacings". These non-optimal lacings give stretch flexations for mid-arch flexations (shoe top surface distorting while running). For a 12 hole system, string loops are best positioned in the center of the pattern and the very top of the pattern. These lacings are also much harder to represent by line segments in simple mathematical permutations, but obvious in topology systems.
This video is NOT about tying laces :)
That's a really beautiful and intuitive proof. Congratulations for that!
Finally a video I could actually follow the whole way through. The section on strength was particularly satisfying, because the first thing I thought was that not all tight lacings are created equal in real shoes.
"Well I've shown you the shortest lacings, now how do we prove such thing?"
Engineers:"Do what now?"
Honestly, your videos are F**KING AWESOME!
Best video I could have watched before going to bed :)
Great stuff! I did find myself looking at the zig-zag, and thinking - ugh, that's the one that gradually de-centres the lace each time you tighten it until it's moved so far out of centre you have to take the time tease it back into position. It can also easily look wonky, as you can pull it out of shape pulling on the long diagonal.
Enter what you called the French lacing, which I use on boots, Doc Marten's, that kind of thing - horizontals are always on top, diagonals always underneath; you just see the horizontal pieces neatly perpendicular to the seam since the diagonals are hidden, but at the same time solving both the de-centring problem and the skew problem. 8-)
Yeah, it took me a while to see it from the diagram, but I started doing the French lacing since finding it in a store because it looks nice.
I like to imagine that it's less stressful for the lace to be getting pulled against the edges of each side, but when has a lace ever broken there?
Is it stronger than the regular cross pattern for boots?
Fascinating example of modeling something from the real world into something formal :D. For me this is teaching a certain way of thinking.
Thank you for your work! Cheers!
I have no idea why but this is one of the most interesting videos I've watched in a while.
I love recreational maths problems they're wonderful, thanks for sharing your little passion!
Consequently, I learned that I had actually given up tying the starting shoelace knot entirely! (Straight to the bow, no slipknot)
This video skyrocketed to my top 10 favorite TH-cam videos!
This is exactly the type of video I love! I didn’t even go through the step of wondering at myself for enjoying a shoelace video! I ponder this type of stuff too! Perhaps there a mathematician struggling to come out!😁 Thanks for the great video!
For the last couple of years I've relaced my new shoes like at 2:14. I do this for the esthetic reasons of symmetry and horizontal lines. I dont like horizontal lines with one long diagonal.. I dont see many others wear it so it was good to see it in the video
I love your work ❤️. Keep igniting minds.
Sir, put some videos of IMO questions because your explanation are unique and deep
Finally, a mathematical proof that devils and angels are equally evil
Idk why I’m so drawn to this comment
You really the best man! 🙌 Stay cool! Your contents really hits me hard and inspired me to create my own channel and be an inspiration also to others. More power everyone
So lit 💯
I agree
Wow i got a heart from @mathologer ! 😊
Thank you sir for creating this channel.
This got an instant subscribe, awesome video, super fun to watch, perfect pacing and i love the tshirt
I accidentally discovered shortness utility of the bow-tie lacing in my school days when I had a pair of artistic laces (I don't actually remember what the pattern was) which were too short for the shoes I wanted to put them on. A bow-tie pattern with the parallel pairs exposed (to show off the maximum amount of my cool laces) allowed me to tie the laces and keep my sneakers tight enough to wear.
I love Ian's Shoelace Site. At one point I checked it whenever I got new shoes to find a new way to lace my shoes, nowadays I have my fave picked so I don't really need to anymore, but it's still nice
Whats really funny about this is how we still subconsciously use the crisscross lacing across history like a tried and tested method even a shoe as old as 5000 yrs old has bigger eyeholes with a rather thick width and after tying firm the crisscross.
This was highly education and just a fun exploration in general.
As a sneakerhead and mathematics student I greatly appreciate this.
hello from greece what a nice and honest mathematical experience love
FWIW, when i was in the Canadian Navy, we were required to lace our shoes so that the outside laces ran across. We were told this was to make it easier to cut them all if your foot were injured in battle and your shoes needed to be removed.
Love your videos!
- A mathematically inclined electrical engineering student
I was waiting for your video from a long time
thank you sir
Wouldn't the preferred lacing simply be the one that has the least friction throughout, and so, requiring the least "loop-pulls" to both loosen and tighten the shoe?
That's a really neat "dream proof" and great video as usual. I may go off to ponder what, if any, difference it makes when you have to miss one eyelet. Bunions, before you ask.
2 dream proofs that actually worked? What, you're op!
So essentially if we were to rank lacings on strength and length 1 being the best and infinite being the worst we're looking for the lowest sum of the two factors to have the optimal lacing. The natural choice here would be the crisscross lacing.
The crisscross lacing at best has rank 1 in both situations for a sum score of 2 and at worst it falls behind in strength on the zigzag lacing for a sum score of 3.
The zigzag lacing at best will be 1st on strength and 2nd in length for a sum score of 3 which is merely equal to the crisscross in the same case.
The case where they do equal at a sum score of 3, it would be a competition of preference where some situations might demand short laces by lack of material but some may prefer a higher tensile strength because they want to climb a mountain today.
Never had the patience to do the math, but bushwhacking for over 50 years made me decide which worked best for me. I re-lace every pair of shoes I purchase.
You are the best math teacher I had in my 40 years of life :-)
Good to hear :)
It's been months since I have watched your work. Great video as always.
Not much new to watch sadly. Have been super busy surviving the COVID-related mess at the university where I teach :(
I enoyed this video so much, thanks Burkard - the dream proof is beautiful! I might try picking up the book soon. Is there any obvious connection to other areas of maths you know, like juggling for example? Does adding an orientaion to each crossing affect things in any significant way?
1st video I see with named segment on the video time line. Very usefull !
Yes, it's a great feature but the way TH-cam has implemented it is a bit buggy. I've tried this on four videos so far. Two worked and two didn't :(
Holy shit. How long have you been back? I thought you were gone. Thanks for another awesome video.
I've always laced my shoes the same way as your 'french shoe shop' example at 2:10 - it is not always about 'shortest' or 'strongest' but also 'neatest'. The top view of this lacing shows clean horizontal lacings - which are easy to grab and tighten. Unlike the zig-zag lacing, it gives equal tension to each half of the lace, while producing a similar overhead appearance.
However, love the maths you demonstrate here and links to the TSP problem.
The one I always use is the lacing at 2:09. I just like the way it looks. I first learned it at a Summer camp decades ago.
I’m really impressed. Awesome.
Always on the look out for the mathematical "sole" of things. :P
I wanted to know this since My early childhood, thank you so much!
This is a really nice proof!
The animation at circa 18:15 is the best thing I've ever encountered on this channel.
Please, give us more of your original research, beautiful dreamer.
Glad you like that animation so much :) Having said that I'd say dig around a bit more in other Mathologer videos and you'll find a lot fancier animations.
It makes me happy that there are at least two people on the planet who have thought deeply about laces
These days kids have velcro fasteners. When I was a kid, I laced all my running shoes. What I learned early on was that unusual lacings caused uneven wear. The worst was the zigzag form you showed at the beginning -- this always resulted in a worn out, then broken lace on the long diagonal lace. Today whenever I buy shoes they usually don't have criss cross lacings (no idea why) but I always re-lace them to criss-cross style so that I get the most even wear.
Love your videos man. Wish I had mathematician and programmer friends 😪
I just watched a math professor talking about shoelaces... not a bad binge watch.
In recent years, when I buy shoes they tend to be laced in strange ways so that I always have to relace them (to criss-cross lacing). I wonder why this is. Are there lacings that can be done FASTER in the factory? Have you ever considered speed of lacing as a criterion?
I don't think I have ever bought a pair of shoes that didn't come with some form of crisscross lacing.
Most shoes come unlaced, or partially laced. Any factory or store lacing other than criss-cross is usually done for aesthetic reasons.
I square lace my shoes; absolutely suboptimal for efficiency, but tops in comfort if you want control over where the shoe compresses. I could see a case for square lacing via machine as there's no need to weave the laces, they simply lay flat over each-other.
as an addendum; under your (Mathologer) function for calculating by rise/run, each vertical member of a square lace would be +-infinite?
This is something I do to every pair of shoes/boots I have bought in the 40 years. OCD for sure, but it pays off over time.
When you asked what the shortest lacing is, I paused the video for a few seconds to think about it, and reached the conclusion that it intuitively should be the criss cross lacing (or the bowtie lacing for a non-tight lacing), because I could not think of any way to make it shorter (starting with an infinite number of eyelets, it is clear that you wouldn't want to make the segments any longer than they have to be, else you would have to make more than one return trip, because connecting two closest pairs of eyelets with zigzag is obviously longer than doing so with two crossing segments and the zigzag pattern is obviously the only way to fill in any gaps longer than one on a single return trip in a tight lacing, unless the distance between rows is unrealistically small relative to the distance between eyelets - but even then, a zigzag does require the "return trip" (since it isn't included in the subset of 4 eyelets we're considering), which even on an infinitely long and infinitely narrow shoe is at least the distance between eyelets, making it longer again). I don't know if this is enough for a formal proof though although I don't see why not.
13:43 "Fun, no? ... Well I don't care. I think it's fun."
What about for lacings where the holes don’t have to be directly opposite each other? The zigzag lacing shown is very similar to spiral lacing, used for stays/corsets until some time in the 19th century, except for two things: the holes (except for the top and bottom pair) are offset so that the crossing angle stays constant, and the lace is simply tied off at the top and bottom, with no long lace running between them, but I suspect that’s also the case for the shoes.
EDIT: after hearing about which lacing is strongest, I have to take a look at whether the typical distance between eyelet became denser over time, in which case it would make sense if the bones bodices of the renaissance were spiral laced, but the Victorian corset crisscross laced.
Was coming to mention spiral lacing myself, but the context I learnt of it was arming garments which bore the weight of armour (usually arm or leg) tied to them.
I learned something in the first 3 minutes of the video. If your laces are too short for standard zig-zag lacing, use the French lacing and they may be just long enough.
That trick of finding a less restrictive form and finding that your proof is simpler there is a common one.
The fact that half of all angelic lacings are a bit off of vertical symmetry - 13:40 - while devilish lacings are always neatly symmetrical - 13:26 - makes me think that switching "devilish" and "angelic" names would make more sense :D
First time here, but I subscribed as soon as I saw the t-shirt.
i already have ians laces app. i liked how the shoelaces dangle when you shake the phone.
I had a dream proof for an assignment once, never felt as productive as when working in my sleep, plus I had gone to bed the night before being stuck and within 10 minutes of waking up everything worked perfectly
The proof diagrams (11:45) look like magic Runes. I think Bukard might be using some Norse magic here!
the exploded lacing dream proof is fantastic. I think the criss-crossing of lacings is just inherently confusing to the human mind, and eliminating that factor by exploding them really does relieve the mind and make it less intimidating to tackle the problem. great stuff!
Fascinating, I would have expected the devil and angel lacings to be the strongest.
I've got another way to evaluate the "best" lacing. How about most evenly distributed? Specifically, what arrangement would have the lowest standard deviation of each hole's horizontal factor in a vector that is the sum of the vectors, pointed the same way the laces are going.
As for the magnitude, I can think of two options:
A: Perfect maths land where friction is meaningless and thus all the "pulling vectors" have a magnitude of 1.
B: We account for friction, where the more holes the string passes through from the knot the less any tightening affects it. And thus the magnitude of a string pulling is F^D1+F^D2, where F is our factor of friction and D1 is how many holes must be passed through to get to the knot in one direction and D2 in the other direction.
I predict that for case A the common criss-cross will work, but I expect something different and interesting for case B. As with how it is the furtheraway you get from the knot the weaker it's effect it and so there's a gradient of strength down the lacing, but by using a longer and overall weaker lace we might discover a more evenly distributed lace.
(And potentially a more convenient/comfortable lace ;D )
Everytime i watch old videos from you, you upload a new one, at the same day....
Could you please do like a behind the scenes of the animations and that stuff?
Grüße aus Deutschland
I've always done a bow tie lacing with my oxfords, because its the only practical way you can guarantee that the crosses will happen on top of the shoe at regular spacing. The regular spacing also looks nice. Would recommend, not just because it's generally the shortest (but thanks for additional excuse Burkard)
That's great, I've finally heard from someone who actually uses bowtie lacings :)
I got tied up watching till the end...bravo !
That's great :)
This is an amazing proof
Excellent!!!
I started bowtie type lacing about a year ago on my boots and will never go back. Fast to tighten as well as remove, and it's easy to cut laces off pretty quickly if necessary.
He's back!
I also had modelled with combinatory of the sum of numbers adding up to the spaces between holes (1,1,2;1,2,1;2,1,1,...) I got 15 for 5 and 25 for 6. Always odd because of the crisscross. Nice graphs puzzle and I suspect, lots of real world applications beyond shoes
Congrats for ur 600K subscribers ✌👏👏
Thank you 🙌
Imagine having a dad who can always help you with your math home work🤣
0:35 "on the look-out for the mathematical soul of things". Haha - nice shout out to Shylock ("not on your sole, but on your soul...").
An excellent shoelace knot is the Lilliebow - the handcuff knot withe reverse tension - or you can name it after youself like Ian on his shoelace site