Statistic of the Week - 26

26: the number of moves required to solve any configuration of a Rubik’s cube. This is a new world record, announced last week, and beating the previous record by one move.

Northeastern University Computer Science professor Gene Cooperman and graduate student Dan Kunkle used Teragrid and university resources to sort through 7 terabytes of data, covering 43 quintillion possible combinations.

The result? A program that can solve any Rubik’s cube in around a second, and in 26 moves or less.

And why?

“The Rubik’s cube is a testing ground for problems of search and enumeration,” Cooperman explains. “Search and enumeration is a large research area encompassing many researchers working in different disciplines—from artificial intelligence to operations.”

“The Rubik’s cube allows researchers from different disciplines to compare their methods on a single, well-known problem.”