The story is told by the Jewish historian Josephus of a band of 41 rebels, who, preferring suicide to capture, decided to stand in a circle and kill every third remaining person until no one was left. Josephus, one of the number, quickly calculated where he and his friend should stand so that they would be the last two remaining and so avoid being a part of the suicide pact. In its most general form, the Josephus problem is to find the position of the one who survives when there are n people in a circle and every m‐th remaining person is eliminated.