13 Stripes and 51 Stars | Hacker News Reader

13 Stripes and 51 Stars

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25 pointsfjania32 comments

A mathematician figures out the best way to jam an extra star onto the American flag. How would you do it?

I like the Brazilian solution of positioning the stars on the flag as they appear in the sky.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Brazil

I was a bit disappointed when the Brazilian soccer squad won their fifth world title and didn't put the stars in a Southern Cross formation on their uniform.

uhm "The United States Army Institute of Heraldry has plans for flags with up to 56 stars" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Army_Institute_of... http://www.tioh.hqda.pentagon.mil/

Six more? Puerto Rico, DC, British Columbia, Baja California, Cuba, and...?

It's interesting to see all the areas worldwide that have, at one time or another and with varying degrees of seriousness, been proposed as new US states. See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/51st_state

Britain?

Might as well add Sicily, then.

My guess would be DC, the 4 unincorporated, organized territories ( Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and US Virgin Islands), and American Samoa (the only substantially inhabited unincorporated, unorganized territory).

My guess is that they found a sequence that worked until it hit 56, so they stopped there.

Luna

I like it! Let's throw in L1, L2, L3, L4, L5 too. The new flag starfield:

     ★   ★   ★   ★   ★   ★ L4
       ★   ★   ★   ★   ★
     ★   ★   ★   ★   ★   ★ 
       ★   ★   ★   ★   ★
 L3  ★   ★   ★   ★   ★   ★   L1  ☽  L2
       ★   ★   ★   ★   ★
     ★   ★   ★   ★   ★   ★
       ★   ★   ★   ★   ★
     ★   ★   ★   ★   ★   ★ L5

Different, but I really like the proposed circular formation for 51 stars. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8f/US_...

Of course if we adopted it, some right-wingers would say it means were going commie, or something like it.

The blue area seems to be a little small. Why do you say "Of course if we adopted it, some right-wingers would say it means were going commie, or something like it."? I have seen a lot of original 13-star circular flags in the possession of people that would self-describe as being on the right.

I think it's because of who proposed it: the New Progressive Party of Puerto Rico, according to Wikipedia in the "51st State" article.

I like the arrangement, too, but I can see why its provenance might taint it in some eyes. That's unfortunate; it's a much more pleasant arrangement than the one we currently have.

I could also see people objecting to changing the US's hundred-odd-year tradition of having ugly and grating arrangements of stars. :) And the circular star arrangement _is_ something one tends to see flown by sinister US successor states like those in _Fallout_ and _Jericho_...

The New Progressive Party is the right-wing party in Puerto Rico. It was founded by Republicans and most of its leadership is affiliated with the Republicans.

It's the left-wing parties of Puerto Rico that are the ones that favor free association or independence instead of statehood.

I love it - esp. the 5-point star that forms when you look at it for several seconds.

For those interested: it comes from this article here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_the_United_States

which has a timeline of all past flags, too.

After reading the article I was going to suggest the same thing. I think the radial symmetry is much more pleasing and I like the nod to the original 13 star flag.

I wonder why there are no valid patterns for 87 stars?

Same with 69 stars, must be a mathematical error not a actual arrangement problem.

You could have uneven rows for 69:

  * * * * * * * * * 
   * * * * * * * * 
    * * * * * * * 
    * * * * * * * 
    * * * * * * * 
    * * * * * * * 
    * * * * * * * 
   * * * * * * * * 
  * * * * * * * * *

(Copied from my reddit comment: http://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/cd6v6/a_mathematician_...)

Sad that Puerto Rico might become a state before DC

Why does DC need to become a state?

So that they can have the same congressional representation as the rest of the US.

So that the US citizens that live there are fully represented.

http://www.dcvote.org/

Why should DC residents pay federal income tax?

Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution provides for a federal district (distinct from the states) to serve as the seat of government.

The location of the federal district was a result of a compromise between Hamilton, Madison, and Jefferson. The U.S. capital city was New York at the time. Jefferson didn't want the federal government controlled by one of the largest Northern states. So he struck a bargain with Hamilton, agreeing to support Hamilton's plan for the federal government to assume the states' debts in exchange for the creation of a federal district apart from the power of any one of the states of the union (and further south).

You can read more about the reasons for removing the capital from state territory here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Residence_Act

(Full disclosure: I wouldn't mind Eleanor Holmes Norton getting a vote in the House, but I would be against DC having senators.)

I understand the history, but it hardly seems relevant to the current situation. Having the seat of federal power exist in a state-less region makes sense, but having half a million people live there too doesn't.

And why no Senators? It's not like DC would be the least populous state, yet I don't see many campaigns to strip Wyoming of its senators.

Seems like most of the opposition is from Republicans who recognize that DC would almost certainly elect liberal Democrats. And that's just ridiculously unfair.

I think the bigger problem is that we let people make permanent residence in area that was designed not to be part of a state. Perhaps they could shrink the DC area down and give the residential land back to the appropriate states.

Precedent:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_retrocessi...

So, what did we do when we had 29 states?

Answer Here: http://www.ushistory.org/betsy/flagfact.html

Neither one are patterns he put into the algorithm.

That site is s.l.o.w. for me. Wikipedia has the same chart (without the extra trivia, though) here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_the_United_States

No solution for 87?

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