Is there an algorithm for solving the following problem: let $g_1,ldots,g_n$ be permutations in some (large) symmetric group, and $g$ be a permutation that is known to be in the subgroup generated by $g_1,ldots,g_n$, can we write $g$ explicitly as a product of the $g_i$'s?
My motivation is that I'm TAing an intro abstract algebra course, and would like to use the Rubik's cube to motivate a lot of things for my students, and would, in particular, like to show them an algorithm to solve it using group theory. (That is, I can write down what permutation of the cubes I have, and want to decompose it into basic rotations, which I then invert and do in the opposite order to get back to the solved state.) Though I'm interested in the more general case, not just for the Rubik(n) groups, if a solution works out.
Note: I don't really know what keywords to use for solving this problem, if someone can point me to the right search terms to google to get the results I'm looking for, I'll gladly close this.
No comments:
Post a Comment