https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superpermutation

In September 2011, an anonymous poster on the Science & Math (“/sci/”) board of 4chan proved that the smallest superpermutation on n symbols (n ≥ 2) has at least length n! + (n−1)! + (n−2)! + n − 3. In reference to the Japanese anime series The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, particularly the fact that it was originally broadcast as a nonlinear narrative, the problem was presented on the imageboard as “The Haruhi Problem”: if you wanted to watch the 14 episodes of the first season of the series in every possible order, what would be the shortest string of episodes you would need to watch? The proof for this lower bound came to the general public interest in October 2018, after mathematician and computer scientist Robin Houston tweeted about it. On 25 October 2018, Robin Houston, Jay Pantone, and Vince Vatter posted a refined version of this proof in the On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences (OEIS). A published version of this proof, credited to “Anonymous 4chan poster”, appears in Engen and Vatter (2021).

For “The Haruhi Problem” specifically (the case for 14 symbols), the current lower and upper bound are 93,884,313,611 and 93,924,230,411, respectively. This means that watching the series in every possible order would require about 4.3 million years.

dv said:

This means that watching the series in every possible order would require about 4.3 million years.

Could clean up big on overtime rates, and long service leave accumulation.

I’m no mathemagician, but how come it isn’t just n! ?

The Rev Dodgson said:

I’m no mathemagician, but how come it isn’t just n! ?

I think you read without full care.

Answer here

I still don’t get it.

What is the point of these supermutations?

The Rev Dodgson said:

Answer here

I still don’t get it.

What is the point of these supermutations?

What’s the point of anything?

But anyway the idea of it is to find the shortest string that contains all the permutations. Like for two, the shortest such has length 3, e.g. 121. For three, a shortest such string has length 9, e.g. 123121321.

dv said:

But anyway the idea of it is to find the shortest string that contains all the permutations. Like for two, the shortest such has length 3, e.g. 121. For three, a shortest such string has length 9, e.g. 123121321.

Yeah, I eventually got that from the TATE article.

Seems like cheating to me.

dv said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

Answer here

I still don’t get it.

What is the point of these supermutations?

What’s the point of anything?

LIFE

SCIENCE said:

dv said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

Answer here

I still don’t get it.

What is the point of these supermutations?

What’s the point of anything?

LIFE

the universe