Gregory–Newton summation identity for signed pancake distances
Let denote the number of signed permutations of size whose burnt-pancake distance from the sorted stack is . Summation identity conjecture. If , then
The identity is observed in the source and is motivated by the assertion that the functions are integer-valued polynomials together with the Gregory–Newton interpolation formula. No proof or resolution is supplied, so it remains open.
References
Primary source
Saúl A. Blanco, Charles Buehrle and Akshay Patidar, “On the number of pancake stacks requiring four flips to be sorted”, arXiv:1902.04055 (2019).
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