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Self-descriptive strings

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2016

Michael D. Mckay  and
Michael S. Waterman
Michael D. Mckay
Affiliation:
Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico 87545, U.S.A.
Michael S. Waterman
Affiliation:
Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico 87545, U.S.A.
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Extract

Take a look at the ‘string’ (or finite sequence)

6,2,1,0,0,0,1,0,0,0.

Count the occurrences of the numbers:

Notice that the bottom row is the string we started with! In fact the above string is the unique answer to the popular question (posed, for example, in a recent edition of the Trans World Airlines magazine, The Ambassador, August 1978) to find a string

Type
Research Article
Information
The Mathematical Gazette , Volume 66 , Issue 435 , March 1982 , pp. 1 - 4
Copyright
Copyright © Mathematical Association 1982

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