English

The minimum overlap problem revisited

General Mathematics 2016-09-27 v1

Abstract

For a given partition of (1, 2, ..., 2n) into two disjoint subsets A and B with n elements in each, consider the maximum number of times any integer occurs as the difference between an element of A and an element of B. The minimum value of this maximum (over all partitions) is denoted by M(n). By a result of Swinnerton-Dyer, one way to estimate lim M(n)/n from above is to give step functions that describe the density of A, say, throughout the interval [1, 2n] for a large n rather than looking for explicit partitions. A step function that improves the upper bound from 0.382002... to 0.380926... is given.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1609.08000,
  title  = {The minimum overlap problem revisited},
  author = {Jan Kristian Haugland},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1609.08000},
  year   = {2016}
}

Comments

2 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-22T16:01:28.134Z