Mind switches in Futurama and Stargate

DOI10.4169/MATH.MAG.87.4.252MaRDI QIDQ3454166zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Li-Hua Huang, Ron Evans

Publication date 23 November 2015

Published in Mathematics Magazine (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1209.4991

zbMATH Keywords

permutationsmind switching

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Permutations, words, matrices (05A05) Recreational mathematics (00A08)

Abstract: Let P be a permutation expressed as a product of nontrivial disjoint cycles. When writing P as a product of distinct transpositions none equal to a factor of P, what is the smallest number of transpositions that can be used? We answer this question and give applications to mind-switching problems that have arisen in connection with the popular sci-fi television series Futurama and Stargate SG-1.

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Cited in

(2)

• A note on the factorization of permutations into cycles
• A duality for labeled graphs and factorizations with applications to graph embeddings and Hurwitz enumeration

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