Formulation
The necklace problem involves the reconstruction of a necklace of n beads, each of which is either black or white, from partial information. A k-configuration in a necklace is a subset of k positions in the necklace; two configurations are isomorphic if one can be obtained from the other by a rotation of the necklace. At stage k of the reconstruction process, the partial information available at that stage is a count, for each k-configuration, of the number of k-configurations that are isomorphic to it and that contain only black beads. The necklace problem is: given n, how many stages are needed (in the worst case) in order to reconstruct the precise pattern of black and white beads in the original necklace?
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