this post was submitted on 29 Mar 2024
405 points (95.3% liked)

Programmer Humor

19145 readers
1335 users here now

Welcome to Programmer Humor!

This is a place where you can post jokes, memes, humor, etc. related to programming!

For sharing awful code theres also Programming Horror.

Rules

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] exocrinous@startrek.website 9 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I'm clearly not understanding the problem, because I think the only answer is 14!. What am I getting wrong?

[โ€“] ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca 21 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

The question is about "superpermutations". The permutations of 1 and 2 are "12" and "21". A "superpermutation" would be "1221". It contains the numbers 1 and 2 as well as all permutations of 1 and 2. However "121" is also a superpermutation of 1 and 2. It also contains "12" and "21" and it's shorter than "1221".

The problem is finding the shortest superpermutation. Stand-up Maths has a video where he interviews a mathematician that published Anonymous' solution. So yes, there is a math paper where the main author is "Anonymous 4chan Poster".