[mrcactu5]

Here's some notes from Harvard on how to count Rubik's Cube positions with Group Theory

The number is: 2^(12)3^88!*12!

http://www.math.harvard.edu/~jjchen/docs/Group%20Theory%20an...

[skrebbel]

I know mathematicians hate interpunction with a passion but that one's pretty extreme! I have no idea where the timeses and the parentheses are supposed to go..

[LeifCarrotson]

It's not helped by the fact than HN markup is interpreting asterisks as requests for italics and backslashes as escape sequences...

[simias]

The fact that HN still doesn't have a proper way to display code or mathematical formulas after all these years is a bit ridiculous. I guess by now it's part of the website's culture...

[yjftsjthsd-h]

I'd prefer real markdown, but iirc 4 spaces of indentation does it?

    Foo*bar

[saagarjha]

Two: https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc

[rlue]

Does anyone know where to find a guide to HN markup? I've exhausted my google-fu and have come up dry...

[saagarjha]

There's a short one here: https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc

[rlue]

Thanks!

[rbonvall]

It's 2^12 × 3^8 × 8! × 12!

[quietbritishjim]

To go full Unicode: 2¹² × 3⁸ × 8! × 12!

[jacobolus]

12!9!(4!3!)³

[cheerlessbog]

Perhaps someone can tell us how many digits that has (or am expression for how many digits...)

[schoen]

Its explicit value is 519024039293878272000 (not nearly as big as some integers we discuss around here!).

[bunderbunder]

Or roughly 5.2E20, if you're just looking for the order of magnitude.

Or ~520 exapositions, if you want to say it in a way that upsets people.

[a1369209993]

451 exapositions, if you want to say it in a way that really upsets people.

[basetop]

It's pretty much impossible to decipher if you don't remember the operator precedence or have the operator precendence handy.

[c3534l]

! has operator precedence over \

[dathmar]

The same paper also states that they calculated the number above earlier, but only about 1/12th of those are valid so the real number of valid combinations is 4x10^19

[snazz]

Looks like you might need to put spaces between * and other text because the auto-italicization thing is gobbling your multiplication.

[avip]

2 spaces prefix for verbatim