Related papers: Average number of flips in pancake sorting
We use an interesting result of probabilistic flavor concerning the product of two permutations consisting of one cycle each to find an explicit formula for the average number of block interchanges needed to sort a permutation of length…
We consider the classic cake cutting problem in the Robertson-Webb model, with the objective of proportional fairness. We show that any randomized algorithm must use $\Omega(n \log n)$ queries.
We consider a stack sorting algorithm where only the appropriate output values are popped from the stack and then any remaining entries in the stack are run through the stack in reverse order. We identify the basis for the $2$-reverse pass…
We study the disproportionate version of the classical cake-cutting problem: how efficiently can we divide a cake, here $[0,1]$, among $n$ agents with different demands $\alpha_1, \alpha_2, \dots, \alpha_n$ summing to $1$? When all the…
Consider an n by n array of cards shuffled in the following manner. An element x of the array is chosen uniformly at random; Then with probability 1/2 the rectangle of cards above and to the left of x is rotated 180 degrees, and with…
We determine the maximal number of steps required to sort $n$ labeled points on a circle by adjacent swaps. Lower bounds for sorting by all swaps, not necessarily adjacent, are given as well.
We introduce a sorting machine consisting of $k+1$ stacks in series: the first $k$ stacks can only contain elements in decreasing order from top to bottom, while the last one has the opposite restriction. This device generalizes \cite{SM},…
We present new parallel sorting networks for $17$ to $20$ inputs. For $17, 19,$ and $20$ inputs these new networks are faster (i.e., they require less computation steps) than the previously known best networks. Therefore, we improve upon…
In this paper we study several variations of the \emph{pancake flipping problem}, which is also well known as the problem of \emph{sorting by prefix reversals}. We consider the variations in the sorting process by adding with prefix…
MergeInsertion, also known as the Ford-Johnson algorithm, is a sorting algorithm which, up to today, for many input sizes achieves the best known upper bound on the number of comparisons. Indeed, it gets extremely close to the…
Sorting networks are oblivious sorting algorithms with many interesting theoretical properties and practical applications. One of the related classical challenges is the search of optimal networks respect to size (number of comparators) of…
We consider the online bin packing problem under the advice complexity model where the 'online constraint' is relaxed and an algorithm receives partial information about the future requests. We provide tight upper and lower bounds for the…
In sorting situations where the final destination of each item is known, it is natural to repeatedly choose items and place them where they belong, allowing the intervening items to shift by one to make room. (In fact, a special case of…
We present numerical results for the probability of bad cases for Quicksort, i.e. cases of input data for which the sorting cost considerably exceeds that of the average. Dynamic programming was used to compute solutions of the recurrence…
We continue the study of Adin, Alon and Roichman [arXiv:2502.14398, 2025] on the number of steps required to sort $n$ labelled points on a circle by transpositions. Imagine that the vertices of a cycle of length $n$ are labelled by the…
We study a family of sorting match puzzles on grids, which we call permutation match puzzles. In this puzzle, each row and column of a $n \times n$ grid is labeled with an ordering constraint -- ascending (A) or descending (D) -- and the…
The best known lower and upper bounds on the mixing time for the random-to-random insertions shuffle are $(1/2-o(1))n\log n$ and $(2+o(1))n\log n$. A long standing open problem is to prove that the mixing time exhibits a cutoff. In…
We investigate a variant of the chip-firing process on the infinite path graph: rather than treating the chips as indistinguishable, we label them with positive integers. To fire an unstable vertex, i.e. a vertex with more than one chip, we…
We examine sorting algorithms for $n$ elements whose basic operation is comparing $t$ elements simultaneously (a $t$-comparator). We focus on algorithms that use only a single round or two rounds -- comparisons performed in the second round…
We give a short proof for Strassen's result that the rank of the 2 by 2 matrix multiplication tensor is at most 7. The proof requires no calculations and also no pattern matching or other type of nontrivial verification, and is based solely…