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Powerful Powers Pileup! (Posted on 2005-04-03) Difficulty: 3 of 5
Given a list of positive integers a, b, c, ... z, you can calculate the superpower a^b^c^...^z. [Note that this is a^(b^(c^(...(y^z)...))).]

What's the largest/least superpower value you can get with the list 2, 3, 4, ... n?

See The Solution Submitted by Old Original Oskar!    
Rating: 3.0000 (1 votes)

Comments: ( Back to comment list | You must be logged in to post comments.)
Intuitive guess | Comment 1 of 3
Based on the idea that you make a number much larger when you use it as an exponent over a small number rather than use it as a base raised to a small number (i.e., 1.01^1000  > 1000^1.01), it would seem to follow that you want to arrange the numbers from smallest as the ultimate base to largest as the ultimate exponent.  However, this may fail at the final (highest power-ed) step, so a manual check should be made (e.g. in the case of 2 and 3, 3^2>2^3 wich breaks the above general rule).  This works for the few, small number, small sets that I tested with; expanding beyond these trials and proofs are beyond my abilities.
  Posted by Cory Taylor on 2005-04-04 14:55:38
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