From cube-lovers-errors@curry.epilogue.com Wed Jun 5 19:52:19 1996 Return-Path: cube-lovers-errors@curry.epilogue.com Received: from curry.epilogue.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by curry.epilogue.com (8.6.12/8.6.12) with SMTP id TAA07842 for ; Wed, 5 Jun 1996 19:52:17 -0400 Precedence: bulk Errors-To: cube-lovers-errors@curry.epilogue.com Date: Wed, 5 Jun 96 19:27:12 EDT From: hoey@aic.nrl.navy.mil Message-Id: <9606052327.AA22049@sun34.aic.nrl.navy.mil> To: Jerry Bryan Cc: Cube-Lovers Subject: Re: A essay on the NxNxN Cube : counting positions and solving it Jerry remarks: > For example, Martin talked about the corner orbit, the edge orbit, and the > face center orbit of the 3x3x3.... > David Singmaster, on the other hand, has always talked about the twelve > orbits of the constructable group of the 3x3x3, where orbits are defined > in terms of twists, flips, and parity.... When a group G has a representation as permutations of a set X, the orbits are the equivalence classes of X induced by x~y if a (x)g=y for some g in G. But these orbits will be different depending on the representation, and in particular depending on X. If we represent the Rubik group as the usual permutations on cubies and facies, the orbits are corners, edges, etc. as Martin uses. I agree this is the usual kind of orbit to talk about. If we represent the Rubik group as permutations on itself (I think it's called the right regular representation) you get one orbit. This is always true of the right regular representation, since for any f, g in G, let h=f'g, and we have (f)h = g, so f~g. But consider the constructible group C, the set of positions you can get by taking the cube apart and putting it back together. We can extend the right regular representation to a representation on C. In this case, there are twelve orbits of mutually accessible positions. This is Singmaster's usage. They are indeed the cosets of C/G, as with any subgroup of a larger group. But the fact that we usually do not consider the group structure of C (as in taking products of reassemblies) militates against calling them cosets, so I can understand why Singmaster might prefer orbits. But we have to remember to disambiguate which kind of orbit we are talking about. Dan Hoey Hoey@AIC.NRL.Navy.Mil