dragontamer 2 years ago

Combinatorics are fun.

People who like reading this article would absolutely like Knuth's 4A volume of The Art of Computer Programming.

Which discusses Permutations, Combinations, Partitions, boolean tricks and more.

I'm think every so often someone asks if TAOCP is worth reading. Well, yes. It's like this article but denser and more mathematical.

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I dont think TAOCP covers this superpermutaion problem. Maybe as an exercise though? I've only read the main section, not really dived into the exercise problems yet... Which are substantial and cover more obscure subjects.

saagarjha 2 years ago

⌘F "Haruhi" yields no results. Disappointed that they didn't even name the show!

  • plagiarist 2 years ago

    It's frustrating the article just ends right there. "Then in 2014 someone did even better. The End." What was the new technique?

_a_a_a_ 2 years ago

A very quick skim of the article immediately brought these to mind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Bruijn_sequence

(Edit: I don't know if it's true but I've heard a story that these sequences were actually used by car thieves to cycle through all N-digit combinations with maximal efficiency. Who says maths isn't useful)

Now, are there any combinatorists here who would be willing to have a private chat with me about something I stumbled upon a few years ago? Almost certainly well known, but I can't find any prior art and I've looked hard.

  • BobbyTables2 2 years ago

    I’m not a combinatorist, but I’m also appalled that two separate Quanta articles didn’t mention De Bruijn sequences.

    I see they are trying to spice up math articles, but this is ridiculous !