this post was submitted on 04 Mar 2026
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Trying to understand what this actually means. Since these two diagrams have the same number of squares, does this mean the inefficient packing squares are actually slightly smaller in a way that's difficult to observe?
Ah, no, it's that the more efficient packing takes up less space, so the less efficient square is actually slightly larger than the other, compared to the smaller squares.
If the smaller squares are identical in both sets, then the larger square in the less-efficient set will be slightly bigger than the larger square in the more efficient set.