Addition Chain

In mathematics, an addition chain for computing a positive integer n can be given by a sequence of natural numbers v and a sequence of index pairs w such that each term in v is the sum of two previous terms, the indices of those terms being specified by w:

v =(v0,...,vs), with v0 = 1 and vs = n
for each 0< is holds: vi = vj + vk, with wi=(j,k) and 0 ≤ j,ki − 1

Often only v is given since it is easy to extract w from v, but sometimes w is not uniquely reconstructible. An introduction is given by Knuth.

Read more about Addition Chain:  Examples, Methods For Computing Addition Chains, Chain Length, Brauer Chain, Scholz Conjecture

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