this post was submitted on 07 Mar 2025
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[–] karpintero@lemmy.world 65 points 1 month ago (7 children)

Some interesting bits from the article:

Anon is credited as the first author in the paper

Computers are able to calculate superpermutations for n = 4 and n = 5 but not for anything beyond that.

Since the series in question has 14 episodes, it would take 93,884,313,611 episodes to see all possible combinations. Or roughly 4 million years of non-stop viewing.

[–] remi_pan 19 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Is this number the exact result or a lower bound ?

[–] karpintero@lemmy.world 38 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Lower. It caught their attention because a science fiction author had come up with upper bound, which the article notes was also bizarre.

Houston had just learned that Australian science fiction author Greg Egan had found a new maximum length for the shortest superpermutations

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