English

Rounds in a combinatorial search problem

Combinatorics 2016-12-04 v1 Data Structures and Algorithms

Abstract

We consider the following combinatorial search problem: we are given some excellent elements of [n][n] and we should find at least one, asking questions of the following type: "Is there an excellent element in A[n]A \subset [n]?". G.O.H. Katona proved sharp results for the number of questions needed to ask in the adaptive, non-adaptive and two-round versions of this problem. We verify a conjecture of Katona by proving that in the rr-round version we need to ask rn1/r+O(1)rn^{1/r}+O(1) queries for fixed rr and this is sharp. We also prove bounds for the queries needed to ask if we want to find at least dd excellent elements.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1611.10133,
  title  = {Rounds in a combinatorial search problem},
  author = {Dániel Gerbner and Máté Vizer},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1611.10133},
  year   = {2016}
}

Comments

14 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-22T17:09:18.789Z