- #1
dipole
- 555
- 151
Suppose you have written down a seven digit phone number, but you realize you made a mistake and two of the digits are interchanged. For example, suppose the correct number is 345-6789, but you have on accident written down 348-6759.
Sticking to the general case though, where you have seven digits in a specific order, and only two of them are out of place - how many possible combinations must you try in order to find the correct number?
The brute force way would be to just try every permutation, 7! but that includes a huge number of combinations which are impossible to be correct - the correct combination must only switch two digits from the original set.
Any ideas how to solve this, or how to construct a procedure to actually generate the list of possibilities?
Sticking to the general case though, where you have seven digits in a specific order, and only two of them are out of place - how many possible combinations must you try in order to find the correct number?
The brute force way would be to just try every permutation, 7! but that includes a huge number of combinations which are impossible to be correct - the correct combination must only switch two digits from the original set.
Any ideas how to solve this, or how to construct a procedure to actually generate the list of possibilities?