
The Goat Problem is a centuries-old geometry problem with no closed form solution. If you tie a goat to the boundary of a circular fence that bounds 1 acre of area, how long does the rope need to be to allow the goat to roam exactly half of this area? Back in December 2020, Quanta Magazine posted a story announcing that Ingo Ullisch, a German mathematician, had reached the first exact solution. The trouble with this solution, however, is that it can only be evaluated iteratively. This is due to...
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