lupire 21 hours ago

Only because "homeomorphic" is a highly technical term that most people don't even know the definition of, let alone have an intuition for, and because "knot" in math is a closed loop, unlikely "knot" in common language.

Once you know the definitions and have learned to tie your shoes, it's quite intuitive. Even a small child can easily constructively prove that knots are homeomorphic.

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bmitc 20 hours ago

Homeomorphic is also interesting because it's a very fancy sounding word for a concept that has very few requirements to be met. It's usually a basic requirement for concepts in topology, but it does very little to distinguish topological spaces. It's essentially a highfalutin word for "these things are basically the same thing in a very basic way".