Show HN: The King Wen Permutation: [52, 10, 2]

gezhengwen 56 points 27 comments March 23, 2026
gzw1987-bit.github.io · View on Hacker News

I analyzed two orderings of the 64 I Ching hexagrams and found the permutation cycle decomposition between them is [52, 10, 2] with zero fixed points. Nobody has done this kind of analysis before and this cycle type has not been reported in the literature. You can verify it yourself.

Discussion Highlights (7 comments)

gezhengwen

I found this by accident while analyzing the I Ching with code. 81% of hexagrams are locked in one chain, none stays in its original position. You can verify it yourself in the browser. Has anyone seen this before?

chordbug

We truly live in an age where facts that are worth "maybe one sentence of space on Wikipedia" can be expanded into full-blown AI-coded interactive websites. I'm not sure how to feel about this. I think in this case it ascribes an inappropriate sense of grandeur: making a mathematical curiosity (and is the result even that surprising?) seem like some deep truth has been unveiled, or we finally found God's Number.

casey2

Random shuffles usually have a big loop

busfahrer

Does cycle here mean the same thing as what Carmack used in Wolf3D to randomly fill the screen with red pixels without any of them repeating?

kazishariar

How/Can you compare this to Magic Squares?

tinix

http://www.levity.com/eschaton/waveexplain.html McKenna got deep into this... https://www.fractal-timewave.com/articles/math_twz_10.htm

variaga

I read the page and went through the "verify the cycles for yourself" sequence and I still have no earthly idea when defining the cycles, what is the rule that says "if you're currently on hexagram X, you can calculate the next hexagram Y by doing..."

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