Talk:Self-avoiding walk

Wrong usage of pages in citation

The "pages=672" of the reference of Flory's book is wrong. Page 672 is the last Page! A citation to the whole book for this really specific statement is useless! Some pages part of the book should be specified. Also it doesn't seem to me that the SAW is mentioned or covered in this book, especially when I look into the table of contents or the subject index. In my opinion this sentence is true, but this book is not the right source.

The whole book is visible under: http://jpkc.hutc.zj.cn/gaofenzi/back/eEditor/UploadFile/2012325114535770.pdf

And searcheable under: https://books.google.de/books?id=CQ0EbEkT5R0C

I expressly distance myself from these links and their content! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.93.129.101 (talk) 19:21, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

American Scientist "How to avoid yourself" link is dead

Suggest changing to http://bit-player.org/wp-content/extras/bph-publications/AmSci-1998-07-Hayes-self-avoidance.pdf Chieuleheng (talk) 07:52, 1 January 2018 (UTC)

Weird phrasing unsolved problem

The page says that there is an unsolved mathematical problem, phrased as "Is there a formula or algorithm that can calculate the number of self-avoiding walks in any given lattice?". This phrasing is very unclear.

All SAWs on a finite grid are enumerable as proven by the pigeonhole principle, whereas the amount of SAWs on an infinite grid is trivially infinite. So in either case, this problem seems to already have a definitive answer depending on interpretation.

That's not to say that there isn't an unsolved problem here, just that the phrasing is so imprecise that it becomes impossible to tell what the unsolved problem is actually supposed to be, so this really ought to be properly clarified by someone who is more familiar with the problem in question. Kayliingo (talk) 00:46, 15 December 2025 (UTC)