I'm a little surprised there's no musings about Fibonacci or Prime numbers.
Certain real-world plants "use" Fibonacci sequences to avoid gaps in their leaf-coverage, which seems eerily reminiscent of OP's problem with covering up gaps using... ah, virtual plants.
As for primes, it seems to me like the typical corn-row problem comes about when there's a certain kind of periodicity in the layout.
So, did you read the article through to the end, because the solution is pretty elegant? Incidentally, the way plants get distributed is somewhat different from the way they distribute parts of themselves.
> So, did you read the article through to the end, because the solution is pretty elegant?
Yes, I read the entire thing (on my phone, even) before starting a reply... Why did you want to know?
> Incidentally, the way plants get distributed is somewhat different from the way they distribute parts of themselves
Certainly, but the OPs goal of "no repeated gaps along a line" only maps to one of those cases... AFAIK plants have no particular incentive to avoid the occasional line-segment as they compete for placement.
It seems like you were proposing a similar (i.e. Perturbed non-random) solution to what was eventually arrived at except that his solution directly derives from the goal.
Certain real-world plants "use" Fibonacci sequences to avoid gaps in their leaf-coverage, which seems eerily reminiscent of OP's problem with covering up gaps using... ah, virtual plants.
As for primes, it seems to me like the typical corn-row problem comes about when there's a certain kind of periodicity in the layout.