Beyond the Runs Theorem

Abstract

Recently, a short and elegant proof was presented showing that a binary word of length $n$ contains at most $n-3$ runs. Here we show, using the same technique and a computer search, that the number of runs in a binary word of length $n$ is at most $\frac{22}{23}n<0.957n$.

New version with substantially improved bound and coauthors who carried out a similar research independently