Busy Beaver

theory (BB) One of a series of sets of Turing Machine

programs. The BBs in the Nth set are programs of N states

that produce a larger finite number of ones on an initially

blank tape than any other program of N states. There is no

program that, given input N, can deduce the productivity

(number of ones output) of the BB of size N.

The productivity of the BB of size 1 is 1. Some work has been

done to figure out productivities of bigger Busy Beavers - the

7th is in the thousands.

(1994-10-24)