An analysis of cubing methods and times...

[Hypocrism]

Perhaps they are better at X than somebody else is at Y. But that's comparing apples to oranges.

 

[Ross The Boss]

One thing that must be addressed is your definition of the word "better." From what I've gathered from your post, you define "better" as the ability to achieve low times while overcoming disadvantages.

Working with this definition I find, fault in your condemnation of the Roux user when compared to the CFOP user.
You say that a roux user is worse than a CFOP user with equal times because the Rouxer is incapable of making use of his move count advantage. While this is logical according to your definition, it is contradicted by one of your later claims. When you say that, "there is [clearly] something difficult or inefficient with Roux," you are putting the aforementioned roux user in a disadvantaged position. This supposed disadvantage cancels out the movecount advantage, thus putting the CFOPer and the Rouxer on equal grounds. Indeed, you state this yourself! "... is a permanent impediment and obstacle that offsets their lower movecount advantage."
According to your definition of better, the Roux user must be considered equally good as the CFOPer. With that I disprove your analysis to scenario 2 (well, actually, you did that for yourself, I just drew the connections).
This also applies to your main conclusion that roux is forever hindered. If the obstacle of M-slices truly does offset the advantage of movecount, the logical conclusion is that there is no net increase or decrease in method potential. (you did not give any weight to the factors of efficiency or movecount, so one is expected to assume they are of equal importance)

Now I would like to take the time to propose some amendments -or at the very least pose some questions relating to- your definition of "Better."
Your reasoning seems to indicate that the overcoming of adversity must be judged on a solve by solve basis. I see this in your comparison of the opposite CN solver and the full CN solver. You take into consideration the disadvantages of the opposite CN solver's limited cross possibilities, but why do you not notice the adversity faced by the full CN solver? You did not do so because his disadvantage is of the past. It is quit difficult to become colour neutral - if you switch midway through your cubing career, you need to break the habits and become accustom to the new outlook on the cube; if you start out neutral, you need to learn ropes of cubing while at the same time being bombarded with the sensory overload of six faces, while the fixed color beginner gets to clear up his mind by specializing each piece as a cross piece, a f2lpiece, etc. I strongly believe that this is an overcomeance worth considering.
So I think that ones judgment of cubing ability should not only based off of the current disadvantages overcome, but on the cumulative disadvantages faced throughout the solvers time spent cubing.
"But, Ross, if the opposite CN solver cubes for long enough, wont the disadvantages he faces each solve eventually add up and outweigh those once faced by the full CN solver in the past??" Of course not young/old question asker! To say such a thing, one must assume that the CN solver becomes stagnant once he reaches neutrality. This could not be further from the truth! The neutral solver must learn to optimize his inspection time as he has six crosses to consider. The fixed/opposite cross solver only has two faces with which to occupy his time. I wonder who has the disadvantage here...

But in all, I think the idea of grading a cuber based on his ability to deal with disadvantages is just silly. It reminds me of a comedian i once saw who did a bit involving "ghetto kids" and how they were always trying to out poor, if you will, each other. (note, this is not a commentary on urban youth, merely a recollection of a comedians likely hyperbolized opinion)


Edit: I guess it would also be worth while to provide some evidence against your claim that M/M' is inefficient. You used Alex as an example so I shall do the same. In his 8.02 average of 5 at the European Championships 2014, his average F2B tps was 6.31. His L6E tps was 6.81. 0.5tps faster than the -for the most part- Mless steps.

and why do you always seem to single out alex for your criticism? you do this even when discussing the method as a whole. do you have some sort of vendetta against the man?

 

[PenguinsDontFly]

i average 5 for first two blocks. probably by the time a rouxer gets to sub 12 they will have sub 6 f2b.

Hmm... well almost there. i do have sub 7 f2b and occasional 5s. And Im sub 13 so... gettin there I guess. 2-4-2.5-3.5. obviously my probkem here is lse and cmll.

 

[Artic]

One thing that must be addressed is your definition of the word "better." From what I've gathered from your post, you define "better" as the ability to achieve low times while overcoming disadvantages.

Working with this definition I find, fault in your condemnation of the Roux user when compared to the CFOP user.
You say that a roux user is worse than a CFOP user with equal times because the Rouxer is incapable of making use of his move count advantage. While this is logical according to your definition, it is contradicted by one of your later claims. When you say that, "there is [clearly] something difficult or inefficient with Roux," you are putting the aforementioned roux user in a disadvantaged position. This supposed disadvantage cancels out the movecount advantage, thus putting the CFOPer and the Rouxer on equal grounds. Indeed, you state this yourself! "... is a permanent impediment and obstacle that offsets their lower movecount advantage."
According to your definition of better, the Roux user must be considered equally good as the CFOPer. With that I disprove your analysis to scenario 2 (well, actually, you did that for yourself, I just drew the connections).
This also applies to your main conclusion that roux is forever hindered. If the obstacle of M-slices truly does offset the advantage of movecount, the logical conclusion is that there is no net increase or decrease in method potential. (you did not give any weight to the factors of efficiency or movecount, so one is expected to assume they are of equal importance)

Edit: I guess it would also be worth while to provide some evidence against your claim that M/M' is inefficient. You used Alex as an example so I shall do the same. In his 8.02 average of 5 at the European Championships 2014, his average F2B tps was 6.31. His L6E tps was 6.81. 0.5tps faster than the -for the most part- Mless steps.

and why do you always seem to single out alex for your criticism? you do this even when discussing the method as a whole. do you have some sort of vendetta against the man?

Pretty good analysis, and your arguments seem logical. But I only made mention of the M-slice impediment in Roux as a possible explanation for it's inefficiency. It was not so much a cause, but an effect. I was trying as best I could to avoid using subjective factors in determining which cuber is better. That is why I limited my arguments to solve time and move count, two factors that are indisputable and determinable.

And your European Championship example only confirms my analysis. If his tps was indeed faster, then coupled with the lower move count for Roux, his times should be much faster! But they're not! In fact, in the end he was only 0.20 seconds ahead of Philip, and he didn't even place top 3 in the semi finals. Again, Roux is supposed to be this great super efficient method, but it's users have a hard time out performing CFOP-ers. Doesn't that strike you as illogical and strange? Clearly there are huge impediments to the method that limit it's usability. Of course, Roux solvers will never admit it.

Also, I have nothing against Alex. He is the fastest Roux solver, so it seems only natural to use him as an example. I also use Feliks a lot as well

 

[PenguinsDontFly]

Pretty good analysis, and your arguments seem logical. But I only made mention of the M-slice impediment in Roux as a possible explanation for it's inefficiency. It was not so much a cause, but an effect. I was trying as best I could to avoid using subjective factors in determining which cuber is better. That is why I limited my arguments to solve time and move count, two factors that are indisputable and determinable.

And your European Championship example only confirms my analysis. If his tps was indeed faster, then coupled with the lower move count for Roux, his times should be much faster! But they're not! In fact, in the end he was only 0.20 seconds ahead of Philip, and he didn't even place top 3 in the semi finals. Again, Roux is supposed to be this great super efficient method, but it's users have a hard time out performing CFOP-ers. Doesn't that strike you as illogical and strange? Clearly there are huge impediments to the method that limit it's usability. Of course, Roux solvers will never admit it.

Also, I have nothing against Alex. He is the fastest Roux solver, so it seems only natural to use him as an example. I also use Feliks a lot as well

Methods dont have limitations. Humans do. Do you even use roux? You seem to be almost picking a fight with every roux solver and even every cfop solver who understands that roux and zz are also viable sub 8 methods. The 'huge impediment' you mention is the fact that roux is less explored, less popular, and has harder lookahead.

 

[GuRoux]

Methods dont have limitations. Humans do. Do you even use roux? You seem to be almost picking a fight with every roux solver and even every cfop solver who understands that roux and zz are also viable sub 8 methods. The 'huge impediment' you mention is the fact that roux is less explored, less popular, and has harder lookahead.

is roux lookahead really that hard? you only have to focus on one side of the cube and look for far less pieces. granted DB is hidden, it usually can be deduced as you solve if it is a SB piece. and if you can't, you can just look at it while you solve the other pieces.

 

[PenguinsDontFly]

is roux lookahead really that hard? you only have to focus on one side of the cube and look for far less pieces. granted DB is hidden, it usually can be deduced as you solve if it is a SB piece. and if you can't, you can just look at it while you solve the other pieces.

Harder than cfop or zz lookahead where you can put pairs in back slots ar restrict all locations of f2l pieces to the R and U layer.

 

[Artic]

is roux lookahead really that hard? you only have to focus on one side of the cube and look for far less pieces. granted DB is hidden, it usually can be deduced as you solve if it is a SB piece. and if you can't, you can just look at it while you solve the other pieces.

Agree with this.

Harder than cfop or zz lookahead where you can put pairs in back slots ar restrict all locations of f2l pieces to the R and U layer.

Nope, I disagree. I think CFOP lookahead is just as hard. Many people struggle with F2L lookahead and post new threads on it every week. And it makes sense, you have to rotate around the cube searching for edges and corners and it takes enormous practice and vision to nail it down to a decent level. Furthermore, Roux is rotationless, yet another advantage over CFOP. And yet despite this, Roux times still aren't as good in general, when in fact...they should be better given all of its supposed advantages(lower move count, rotationless etc)

So we have a method: Roux, which claims advantages over CFOP, and yet in general cannot deliver the times of CFOP solvers. Yet despite the evidence, Roux solvers won't admit anything

 

[GuRoux]

Harder than cfop or zz lookahead where you can put pairs in back slots ar restrict all locations of f2l pieces to the R and U layer.

if it is actually easier, then it is not by much. i think one of the main advantages to roux lookahead is that you only have to focus on the right side and that there are fewer pieces to track and differentiate. it is hard to compare though since f2l involves more lookahead because it must be done 4 times versus roux's 2 times for square and pair.

 

[tseitsei]

Again, Roux is supposed to be this great super efficient method, but it's users have a hard time out performing CFOP-ers. Doesn't that strike you as illogical and strange? Clearly there are huge impediments to the method that limit it's usability.

Ok, you still don't seem to understand that there is more to a method than simple move count. "The huge impediment" is very simple and logical. Let me try to explain it to you:

The brainpower and thinking needed for a solve tends to increase when method efficiency is increased (=movecount is decreased). The best methods are those that have best possible compromise between those 2 factors.
Obviously beginners method isn't good but people can easily achieve insane TPS with that method because lookahead is so easy. You only need to track 1 piece at a time and the number of possible cases is very small also.
Also as obviously Heise method is not that good speedsolving method even though it's very very efficient and move count is very low. This is because the recognition and lookahead is too hard for a human to do at full speed.

Now if we compare roux I would say they are about equally capable methods (I think roux has even more potential but that's just my personal opinion). However Roux has better efficiency and move count BUT CFOP has easier lookahead for most of the solve.
So the "huge impediment" for roux is its comlexness compared to CFOP and CFOPs "huge impediment" is its high move count compared to Roux...

is roux lookahead really that hard? you only have to focus on one side of the cube and look for far less pieces. granted DB is hidden, it usually can be deduced as you solve if it is a SB piece. and if you can't, you can just look at it while you solve the other pieces.

The bloded part isn't true IMO. Since in CFOP I only have to track 2 pieces (corner and edge pair) at a time but in roux I need to track 3 pieces (1 corner and 2 edges that make a 1x2x2 square) at a time. That makes roux lookahead hard(er than CFOP). + the fact that edges can be hiding in the D-layer...

 

[BaMiao]

From what I can tell, OP's definition of "better" can just be replaced with "highest TPS". Sure, a CFOP solver with the same times as a Roux solver will probably have higher TPS. What does that tell us about the cubers in question? We can't assume that the CFOP solver will keep his CFOP TPS if he switches over to Roux.

You can argue, given how Roux solvers tend to have lower TPS, that the Roux method has disadvantages that counteract the lower move count. This isn't exactly news, and once again still means nothing when it comes to the cubers in question. It seems that OP is starting from the assumption that Roux is a better method, given the average move count, and using that to say that Alex isn't that good. Then, he points out that Rouxers tend not to be very good by this metric, and suggests that this is due to deficiencies in the Roux method, which directly contradicts the initial assumption. This makes no sense.

The only metric we ultimately care about is solve time, anyway. Trying to define some people as "better" by using any other metric is just pointless. Not only that, but it is especially pointless if we insist on adding one metric (move count) and ignore the other aspects of solving that can be just as important. If you ask me, if cuber A and cuber B have the same solve times, they are equally as good. I don't need to know anything about their methods to say that.

 

[GuRoux]

And your European Championship example only confirms my analysis. If his tps was indeed faster, then coupled with the lower move count for Roux, his times should be much faster! But they're not! In fact, in the end he was only 0.20 seconds ahead of Philip, and he didn't even place top 3 in the semi finals. Again, Roux is supposed to be this great super efficient method, but it's users have a hard time out performing CFOP-ers. Doesn't that strike you as illogical and strange? Clearly there are huge impediments to the method that limit it's usability. Of course, Roux solvers will never admit it.

lau did place 1st in 3 out of 4 of the rounds, that's pretty impressive considering there were 260 other competitors, most of which were using cfop. despite this stellar and unlikely performance, i do not think most rouxers would consider roux to be blatantly superior to cfop as you imply. i think it is general consensus that the method are close in potential and perhaps impossible to confidently say one method is better than the other.

 

[GuRoux]

Ok, you still don't seem to understand that there is more to a method than simple move count. "The huge impediment" is very simple and logical. Let me try to explain it to you:

The brainpower and thinking needed for a solve tends to increase when method efficiency is increased (=movecount is decreased). The best methods are those that have best possible compromise between those 2 factors.
Obviously beginners method isn't good but people can easily achieve insane TPS with that method because lookahead is so easy. You only need to track 1 piece at a time and the number of possible cases is very small also.
Also as obviously Heise method is not that good speedsolving method even though it's very very efficient and move count is very low. This is because the recognition and lookahead is too hard for a human to do at full speed.

Now if we compare roux I would say they are about equally capable methods (I think roux has even more potential but that's just my personal opinion). However Roux has better efficiency and move count BUT CFOP has easier lookahead for most of the solve.
So the "huge impediment" for roux is its comlexness compared to CFOP and CFOPs "huge impediment" is its high move count compared to Roux...



The bloded part isn't true IMO. Since in CFOP I only have to track 2 pieces (corner and edge pair) at a time but in roux I need to track 3 pieces (1 corner and 2 edges that make a 1x2x2 square) at a time. That makes roux lookahead hard(er than CFOP). + the fact that edges can be hiding in the D-layer...

this is true depending on your style for roux. i usually solve DR edge first unless it is very obvious to blockbuild the 1x2x2. by the time i insert that edge i will half the time know where the rest of the pieces are. so for the way i do roux, it is easy to lookahead. if you have to do three pieces, then it will be harder. but i think if you ask any sub 10 cfop user, they will see many corner edge pairs by the time they finish the cross, so it is also manageable in roux.

 

[BaMiao]

this is true depending on your style for roux. i usually solve DR edge first unless it is very obvious to blockbuild the 1x2x2. by the time i insert that edge i will half the time know where the rest of the pieces are. so for the way i do roux, it is easy to lookahead. if you have to do three pieces, then it will be harder. but i think if you ask any sub 10 cfop user, they will see many corner edge pairs by the time they finish the cross, so it is also manageable in roux.

The way you do Roux is less efficient, so that basically agrees with his broader point. In general, efficiency comes with a trade off for lookahead.

 

[GuRoux]

The way you do Roux is less efficient, so that basically agrees with his broader point. In general, efficiency comes with a trade off for lookahead.

what would be most efficient is to use both the appropriate amount. it isn't really known how often putting in DR edge first is best versus how often "blockbuilding" the 1x2x2 is better. in a speed solve i average about 16 moves the way i do it, which is still pretty good.

 

[BaMiao]

what would be most efficient is to use both the appropriate amount. it isn't really known how often putting in DR edge first is best versus how often "blockbuilding" the 1x2x2 is better. in a speed solve i average about 16 moves the way i do it, which is still pretty good.

I'm sure if you found the most efficient (in terms of move count) ways to do every possible second block, only a small (though probably not insignificant) fraction would start with putting in the DR edge first. I'm not saying it is the wrong approach. We sacrifice move efficiency for simplicity or ergonomics all the time, and you've obviously found an approach that works for you.

 

[GuRoux]

I'm sure if you found the most efficient (in terms of move count) ways to do every possible second block, only a small (though probably not insignificant) fraction would start with putting in the DR edge first. I'm not saying it is the wrong approach. We sacrifice move efficiency for simplicity or ergonomics all the time, and you've obviously found an approach that works for you.

well i didn't mean just putting in the DR edge. i almost always influence the next pair and sometimes cancel into and insert while simultaneously solving the DR edge.

 

[BaMiao]

well i didn't mean just putting in the DR edge. i almost always influence the next pair and sometimes cancel into and insert while simultaneously solving the DR edge.

Yes, and that requires good lookahead, right? I'm not trying to find fault in your approach, since you obviously know what you're doing. I'm just trying to highlight the tradeoff between lookahead and move efficiency.

From my experience, anything that improves efficiency also increases the need for lookahead. Last slot methods require looking into the last layer. Multislotting requires seeing multiple pairs at once. Blockbuilding requires tracking more pieces on more areas of the cube than CFOP pairs.

 

[GuRoux]

Yes, and that requires good lookahead, right? I'm not trying to find fault in your approach, since you obviously know what you're doing. I'm just trying to highlight the tradeoff between lookahead and move efficiency.

From my experience, anything that improves efficiency also increases the need for lookahead. Last slot methods require looking into the last layer. Multislotting requires seeing multiple pairs at once. Blockbuilding requires tracking more pieces on more areas of the cube than CFOP pairs.

it does require good lookahead. but i'm sure cfop users do the same thing. they decide which pair to insert and how to insert their first pair to affect later pairs.

 

[CDcuber]

does better here = better tps?