English

Fair partitioning by straight lines

Metric Geometry 2015-09-15 v1

Abstract

A pizza is a pair of planar convex bodies ABA\subseteq B,where BB represents the dough and AA the topping of the pizza. A partition of a pizza by straight lines is a succession of double operations:a cut by a full straight line, followed by a Euclidean move of one of theresulting pieces; then the procedure is repeated.The final partition is said to be fair if each resulting slice has the same amount of AA and the same amount of BB.This note proves that, given an integer n2n\geq2, there exists a fair partition by straight lines of any pizza (A,B)(A,B) into nn parts if and onlyif nn is even.The proof uses the following result:For any planar convex bodies A,BA, B with ABA\subseteq B, and anyα]0,12[\alpha\in\,]0,\frac12[\,, there exists an α\alpha-section of AA which is aβ\beta-section of BB for some βα\beta\geq\alpha. (An α\alpha-section of AA is a straight line cutting AA into two parts, one of which has area αA\alpha|A|.)The question remains open if the word "planar" is dropped.

Cite

@article{arxiv.1509.02090,
  title  = {Fair partitioning by straight lines},
  author = {Augustin Fruchard and Alexander Magazinov},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1509.02090},
  year   = {2015}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-22T10:50:54.727Z