Kudos to monkey587

[torquill]

He posted a link to the Ian Knot, the first I had heard of such a thing. I've taught myself how to do it now, and it seems like my shoelaces don't come untied as easily anymore. (Even if they do, it takes me about two seconds to tie them now, no joke.) My shoes almost always come untied normally.

It's a nice shoelace knot, really, and it's so easy to learn that I wonder whether it would be easier to teach it to kids than the multi-step, rather complicated standard knot.

Comments

[monkey587.livejournal.com]

I do think it may be easier to teach. I think the finished knot is the same as the standard knot, but the difference is I don't have a lifetime of experience tying it the wrong way.

Anyway, I've had my shoe come untied once since learning this knot. before I always had to double-knot, and so I'd just slip in and out of the shoes without ever redoing the knots, which eventually takes its toll on the structural integrity of the shoe. not to mention its appearance...

[foogod.livejournal.com]

I actually disagree on the teaching thing. I think this knot would be a lot harder to teach to young children, because it requires doing two different things with each hand at the same time. Keep in mind that for most children, dexterity is something they're still working on, and it's hard enough to concentrate on one task at a time when you're first learning something.

This is actually a great demonstration of parallel versus serial algorithms. The Ian knot is a basically just a parallelized version of the serial traditional shoelace knot (the parallelism is what makes it faster).

I also found Ian's Secure Knot to be rather interesting too. If you still have issues with shoelaces becoming untied, that one provides a much more secure knot and seems to only take about as long to tie as a standard shoelace knot (probably less, if you really got the hang of it)..