Message #3913

From: Joel Karlsson <joelkarlsson97@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [MC4D] Notation
Date: Thu, 04 Jan 2018 21:05:20 +0100

This got longer than expected… However, there are a lot of examples
(including pictures) so I think that it should be quite readable. For those
only interested in the notation for the physical puzzle, you can skip
"Notation for MC4D" and "Generalisation…" although I encourage you to
explore those as well.


*Coordinate system and labelling*
I’ll use the coordinate system x-right, y-up and z-toward yourself when
introducing my notation. Further, I’ll use R for the right half of the
puzzle, L for left, U for up, D for down, F for front, B for back, C for
center and E for edge. I hope that you are okay with these, the one least
intuitive is probably E which refers to the face on the very top and bottom
when holding the puzzle vertically and the face on the right and left side
of the puzzle when holding the puzzle horizontally. See attached pictures
for some examples.

We’ll see that it’s very useful to introduce notation for the negative
half-axes since rotating a face around the positive half-axis and then
around the negative half-axis (both following the right-hand rule described
below, i.e counterclockwise rotations) brings you back to where you
started. I’ll use ‘ (prime) for this so, x’ is pointing left for example.


*Puzzle representation and rotation:*
It’s very useful to be able to specify the representation and rotation of
the puzzle. I’ll do this by using rep (short for representation) and
indicating which faces are inverted (in contrast with the octahedral
faces). Note that the inverted faces always are opposite so specifying one
is enough although I find it easier to read when both are specified (do as
you wish). For example, rep(UD) means that the up and down faces are
inverted. This doesn’t completely specify the rotation (which axis is
parallel with the long side of the puzzle) in the case that C is inverted.
In this case, I’ll just put that axis after the C so rep(Cx) means that the
C and E face is inverted and that the puzzle is oriented vertically with
the longest side parallel with the x-axis. See attached pictures for some
examples (again). If I don’t say anything I will, in later examples, start
from rep(UD) as in picture 1.


*Basic twists*
Starting with rep(UD) (see picture 1) the easiest move might be Uy,
rotating the U face around the y-axis in the mathematically positive
direction/counterclockwise, following the right-hand rule (right thumb
pointing in the positive y-direction, rotate in the direction that your
right fingers can curl). Similarly, Ux would rotate the U face around the
x-axis, once again, following the right-hand rule. For rotating "clockwise"
we use the prime notation: Ux’ would undo Ux. Note that this still follows
the right-hand rule; Ux’ is a counterclockwise rotation around the negative
half-axis x’ (pointing left). To do 180-degree rotations we can append
numbers. For example, Ux2 is simply Ux Ux. Mathematically, (Ux)^2 would be
more correct but is often less convenient and hence I, more often than not,
don’t use exponent notation. Another example of a possible move from
rep(UD), using 180-degree twists, is Rx2 and for the physical cube, this
can’t easily be broken down to Rx Rx although they are equal (the physical
cube rep(UD) lacks the Rx move).

We also need to be able to describe rotations in 3D-space and I use O
(capital o) for this. This follows the same rules as other moves so, for
example, Oy = Uy Dy (from rep(UD)) is a rotation of the whole cube around
the positive y-axis. Stacking moves (reordering two halves or 1/4 and 3/4
parts of the puzzle) is also very useful (and many correspond to puzzle
rotations that do not change the state of the puzzle) and I use S to denote
these. Stacking moves are not (3D) rotations so the notation might need an
explanation. From rep(UD) Sy would take the top cap and put it on the
bottom, Sy2 would take the upper half (the U face) and put it underneath
the D face, Sx would take the right half and put it to the left and Sx2
would do nothing. So, from picture 1 Sy would take you to picture 2. I’ll
discuss these moves more thoroughly later.

*Extensions facilitating twists corresponding to corner- and edge-clicking
in MC4D*
Often, we want to do twists corresponding to corner- and edge-clicking in
MC4D’s 3^4 cube. To facilitate the use of these moves I thought it
necessary to extend the notation a bit (although the previous notation is
complete). We can use Uxy to rotate the U face in such a way that a
face-fix coordinate system swaps x <-> y, corresponding to clicking on the
xy-edge (the top right edge) in MC4D. So, Uyz’ flips the top 2x2x2 cube
around the top-back edge. As a convention, I prefer to always right in
alphabetical order.

Twists corresponding to corner-clicking can be achieved similarly. We can
use Uxyz for the positive rotation around the xyz corner, corresponding to
clicking on the xyz-corner (the right top front). The inverse of Uxyz would
be Ux’y’z’ or U(xyz)’ (the latter might be easier to read). If we allow
ourselfs to rewrite Ux’y’z’ to U(xyz)’ the three lower case letters can be
thought of as specifying which corner to rotate around and the ‘ (prime) to
specify the direction of the rotation (non-primed rotations always being
positive/counterclockwise) (note that Ux’yz would correspond to
left-clicking at the x’yz corner in MC4D and U(x’yz)’ would correspond to a
right-click on the same corner or a left click on Uxy’z’). The convention
with alphabetical order still applies.

*Notation for MC4D*
This notation turns out to work flawlessly with the virtual cubes in MC4D
as well. There’s only a couple of things that I think should be mentioned
and then you can use the same notation for the virtual 2^4, 3^4, 4^4 and so
on. The S moves are a bit special for the physical cube so for the virtual
ones let Sx be a ctrl-click on the face that lies in the x-direction (R)
and similarly for other S moves. Also, to enable deep twists, let U2x be
the twist similar to Ux but with the layer beneath the surface (I believe
this is achieved by holding down the "2" key in MC4D although that is,
oddly, currently only working for right-clicks for me). We can use the same
principle for bigger cubes and on a 9^4 you can have Ux, U2x, …, U9x.
Note that, just as in MC4D, not using this number sets it to 1 per default
(so Ux = U1x).

*Generalizing the notation to higher-dimensional and bigger cubes*
The notation can be generalized to higher-dimensional cubes. First of all,
more face and axis names would be necessary (one option to not run out of
these as quick would be to use X for the face in the x-direction (R) and X’
for the face in the x’-direction (L) although I believe that it might be
harder to read). Furthermore, rotations in higher dimensions don’t work the
same way; objects are not rotated around an axis but a plane or hyperplane.
However, no matter the dimension there is always a plane of rotation, a
plane in which the points describes circles (this is related to linear
algebra, eigenvectors more specifically, and the definition of a rotation).
So, we could specify this plane instead of the axis to rotate around. Uy
would become Uxz’, Uz’x’, Ux’z or Uzx (taking x -> z’ -> x’ -> z -> x). For
the sake of uniqueness we might not want to use primes in this notation and
then Uy would become Uzx and Uy’ would become Uxz. Since we now need two
lowercase letters to describe a rotation the extension of my notation (with
flips and rotations corresponding to edge- and corner-clicks in MC4D) would
not be applicable.

*Miscellaneous*
Regarding folding moves for the physical 2^4: My previous notation included
folding moves. I do not include those here since I don’t use them. The
reason for not using them is simple: they are not legal elementary twists
of a 2^4 (in the sense that they don’t correspond to simply rotating a
single face or the whole puzzle) and they are not needed to solve the
puzzle. I’m fine with using folding moves to change between different
representations with the same state but, as I will demonstrate in an
upcoming post, they are not necessary to do this either.

Legal moves: There are a few restrictions when using the notation to only
get elementary moves (i.e no shortcuts). From rep(UD) (similarly for other
representations) these are:

Regarding S moves: The non-elementary S moves are needed to get all states
(without them it’s impossible to mix the inverted colours with the others).
I think it’s fine to use these S moves to switch between representations
even though they do indeed change the state of the puzzle (pure puzzle
rotations becomes very slow when speedsolving) although I don’t think that
sequences that use the side effects of S moves should be used (preferably).
What do you think?

Best regards,
Joel


2018-01-03 7:49 GMT+01:00 Joel Karlsson <joelkarlsson97@gmail.com>:

> Great input!
>
> Melinda and Marc have convinced me. As a mathematician I strive not to be
> bounded by notation so even though I’m more familiar with z-up I’ll go with
> x-right, y-up, z-toward yourself. Of course, everyone is free to use their
> personal preference personally but when communicating it’s great to have a
> convention.
>
> Best regards,
> Joel
>
> PS. Notation and more details on my solution upcoming shortly.
>
> Den 3 jan. 2018 12:53 fm skrev "Melinda Green melinda@superliminal.com
> [4D_Cubing]" <4D_Cubing@yahoogroups.com>:
>
>>
>>
>> I must agree with Marc. I didn’t know about the speed solving community’s
>> convention, and that’s probably the strongest argument. Coming from
>> computer graphics, this has been a perennial discussion. Programmers,
>> mathematicians and artist/modelling communities overlap in interests and
>> coordinate preferences like a Venn diagram depending upon whether you
>> prefer to think in terms of screen space or world space. There’s general
>> agreement to begin with +X being to the right. Everything else can cause
>> tension, but the one compromise that everyone seems to be able to live with
>> is making sure that +Y is always up. (Some world-space people prefer +Z up
>> while some graphics people prefer +Y as down.) The phrase "Y is up" has
>> therefore become a kind of touchstone. Given that, positive Z can then be
>> chosen to produce one’s desired handedness. I have no preference on
>> handedness, but since you prefer right-handed, that means +Z should be
>> toward yourself.
>>
>> -Melinda
>>
>> On 1/2/2018 8:46 AM, Joel Karlsson joelkarlsson97@gmail.com [4D_Cubing]
>> wrote:
>> > Hello,
>> >
>> > I’m planning to post a more detailed solution of the physical 2^4 but
>> > to do so I need some notation. I understand that my previous post on
>> > notation was too long and too complicated. Luckily, I have since
>> > realised that a simpler notation is sufficient but before I introduce
>> > it I need some input from you. What coordinate system do you prefer?
>> >
>> > It would be great if we could decide on one coordinate system and then
>> > use that as a convention. Personally, I think that the coordinate
>> > system should be right-handed but besides that, I can use pretty much
>> > any. Two great alternatives are (for the positive half axes):
>> > x-right, y-away from yourself, z-up
>> > x-right, y-up, z-toward yourself
>> >
>> > What do you think?
>> >
>> > Best regards,
>> > Joel
>>
>>
>>
>