There's no real concept of "distance" between elements of a group, and
yet if you were to consider operations on, say, a rubix cube, it's
obvious that some states are further from "solved" than others. That's
because we can't "do" a general operation on the rubix cube in just one
step; we have to generate it from a subset of the group elements that
span the group.
Given a basis for a group, can one calculate in polynomial time how far
apart two states are? How about finding a shortest path between two
states? Does anyone know good search terms to find papers on this sort
of thing?
--
Mike Stay
Cryptographer / Programmer
AccessData Corp.
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
