Now that the word polyamory is officially in the dictionary, I think it's time for mathematicians to start working on one of the biggest problems facing the poly community today: discovering socially-optimal ways to seat people with multiple relationships in a movie theater row. Luckily Facebook is out there on the cutting edge, posting puzzles to encourage dabblers in the burgeoning field of computational erotics. Somebody in the "programming puzzles" community has posted a word problem in which you and fifteen friends are going to a movie about "velociraptors and math." You know the relationships between each person in the group, and must earn as many points as possible by seating them according to this rubric:
- 1 pt: Seating acquaintances next to each other
- 2 pts: Seating two friends next to each other
- 3 pts: Seating two people in a relationship next to each other
- 1 pt: Seating someone next to their crush
- 0 pt: Seating someone next to someone who has a crush on them
- 4 pts: Seating two people together who have mutual crushes on each other
- 0 pts: Seating someone next to a person they are strangers with
- -4 pts: Seating enemies next to each other
- -3 pts: Seating two people in a relationship not next to each other and between them there is someone with a crush on one of them
- -2 pts: Seating two people in a relationship not next to each other but between them there are no people with a crush on either of them
- -2 pts: Seating someone not next to their crush but with that person's significant other between them and the crush
- -1 pts: Seating someone surrounded by strangers
Socially Optimal Theater Seating [via Facebook Programming Puzzles] Thanks, Liz!
