Related papers: The lonely runner with seven runners
Two infinite walks on the same finite graph are called compatible if it is possible to introduce delays into them in such a way that they never collide. Years ago, Peter Winkler asked the question: for which graphs are two independent walks…
On the complete graph ${\cal{K}}_M$ with $M \ge3$ vertices consider two independent discrete time random walks $\mathbb{X}$ and $\mathbb{Y}$, choosing their steps uniformly at random. A pair of trajectories $\mathbb{X} = \{ X_1, X_2, \dots…
Runaway stars are characterized by higher space velocities than typical field stars. They are presumed to have been ejected from their birth places by one or more energetic mechanisms, including supernova explosions. Accurate radial…
In 1999, Jacobson and Lehel conjectured that for $k \geq 3$, every $k$-regular Hamiltonian graph has cycles of at least linearly many different lengths. This was further strengthened by Verstra\"{e}te, who asked whether the regularity can…
In the game of cops and robber, the cops try to capture a robber moving on the vertices of the graph. The minimum number of cops required to win on a given graph $G$ is called the cop number of $G$. The biggest open conjecture in this area…
The Traveling Tournament Problem is a sports-scheduling problem where the goal is to minimize the total travel distance of teams playing a double round-robin tournament. The constraint 'k' is an imposed upper bound on the number of…
Consider a string of N+1 damped oscillators moving on the line of which the motion of the first (called the "leader") is independent of the others. Each of the followers `observes' the relative velocity and position of only its nearest…
Robots with very limited capabilities are placed on the vertices of a graph and are required to move toward a single, common vertex, where they remain stationary once they arrive. This task is referred to as the GATHERING problem. Most of…
Kemeny's constant measures how fast a random walker moves around in a graph. Expressions for Kemeny's constant can be quite involved, and for this reason, many lines of research focus on graphs with structure that makes them amenable to…
A Condorcet voting scheme chooses a winning candidate as one who defeats all others in pairwise majority rule. We provide a review which includes the rigorous mathematical treatment for calculating the limiting probability of a Condorcet…
A longest path in a graph is called a detour. It is easy to see that a connected graph of minimum degree at least $2$ and order at least $4$ has at least $4$ detours. We prove that if the number of detours in such a graph of order at least…
In Communication theory and Coding, it is expected that certain circulant matrices having $k$ ones and $k+1$ zeros in the first row are nonsingular. We prove that such matrices are always nonsingular when $2k+1$ is either a power of a…
Two Beatty sequences are recorded by athletes running in opposite directions in a round stadium. This approach suggests a nice interpretation for well known partitioning criteria: such sequences (eventually) partition the integers…
The union-closed sets conjecture (Frankl's conjecture) says that for any finite union-closed family of finite sets, other than the family consisting only of the empty set, there exists an element that belongs to at least half of the sets in…
We consider a simple symmetric random walk on a spider, that is a collection of half lines (we call them legs) joined at the origin. Our main question is the following: if the walker makes $n$ steps how high can he go up on all legs. This…
Given collections A and B of residue classes modulo m and n, respectively, we investigate conditions on A and B that ensure that, for at least some a in A and b in B, the linear system x = a mod m, x = b mod n has an integer solution, and…
The sequence counting the number of unique tournaments with n people is the same as the sequence counting non-tracking binary strings corresponding to n-2 radar observations with the tracking rule "3 out of 5 with loss 2." This fact allows…
We study the computational complexity of routing multiple objects through a network in such a way that only few collisions occur: Given a graph $G$ with two distinct terminal vertices and two positive integers $p$ and $k$, the question is…
Given a finite nonempty sequence of integers S, by grouping adjacent terms it is always possible to write it, possibly in many ways, as S = X Y^k, where X and Y are sequences and Y is nonempty. Choose the version which maximizes the value…
Hadwiger Conjecture has been an open problem for over a half century1,6, which says that there is at most a complete graph Kt but no Kt+1 for every t-colorable graph. A few cases of Hadwiger Conjecture, such as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6-colorable…