bytex64.net/blog

I just got a new pair of shoes, and have probably spent over half an hour re-lacing them. What originally began as an effort to even out the laces ended up as an exploratory journey into the nature of tying shoes. I realized, as I unlaced each rung, that there were numerous ways of doing it. Do you put the lace through the outside or the inside? Do you start left over right, or right over left? As a flat lace goes through a hole, it folds. Which way should this fold go? Do I make it look good, or concentrate on even application of force onto the tongue?

My mind then started to wonder about alternate permutations. 12 holes, each of which can have the lace go through it once. That's 12! (479,001,600) possibilities just for order alone! Assuming a 12 hole shoe, each person in the United States could be uniquely identified by a particular lacing pattern. If you factor in over and under for each hole (2^12), you now have 1,961,990,553,600, nearly two trillion shoe lacing combinations, enough to uniquely identify every person who has ever lived 17 times over. Such things boggle my mind.

How do I lace my shoes? Lace-under, left-over-right on the left shoe, mirrored on the right, tied with Ian's Secure Shoelace Knot. :)