English

On a question of Matt Baker regarding the dollar game

Combinatorics 2023-08-25 v1

Abstract

In an introductory paper on dollar game played on a graph, Matt Baker wrote the following: ``The total number of borrowing moves required to win the game when playing the 'borrowing binge strategy' is independent of which borrowing moves you do in which order! Note, however, that it is usually possible to win in fewer moves by employing lending moves in combination with borrowing moves. The optimal strategy when one uses both kinds of moves is not yet understood.'' In this article, we give a lower bound on the minimum number Mmin M_{\text{min}} of such moves of an optimal algorithm in terms of the number of moves M0 M_0 of the borrowing binge strategy. Concretely, we have: MminM0n1 M_{\text{min}} \geq \frac{M_0}{n-1} where n n is the number of vertices of the graph. This bound is tight.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2308.12787,
  title  = {On a question of Matt Baker regarding the dollar game},
  author = {Marine Cases-Thomas},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2308.12787},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

9 pages, 3 figures