lew (04/09/83)
I recently participated in a group activity that involved ranking the importance of 15 items, then scoring that ranking by taking the sum of the absolute differences with a standard ranking. It's not too hard to figure out the mean score over all rankings (74.6667) but I can't think of a way to derive the entire distribution over scores. There are only 56 possible scores (0 through 112 by 2's), and the answer I am seeking would be the 56 values of the number of rankings giving each score (Only one way to get 0 e.g.) 15! is 1.3e12 so enumeration seems out of the question. Does anybody feel the combinatorial juices flowing? Lew Mammel, Jr. ihuxr!lew