Related papers: Odd One Out
Braid is a 2008 puzzle game centered around the ability to reverse time. We show that Braid can simulate an arbitrary computation. Our construction makes no use of Braid's unique time mechanics, and therefore may apply to many other video…
Unexpectedness is a central concept in Simplicity Theory, a theory of cognition relating various inferential processes to the computation of Kolmogorov complexities, rather than probabilities. Its predictive power has been confirmed by…
It remains an open question whether incorporating external knowledge benefits commonsense reasoning while maintaining the flexibility of pretrained sequence models. To investigate this question, we develop generated knowledge prompting,…
The present notes are based on a course on Cherednik algebras given by the first author at MIT in the Fall of 2009. Their goal is to give an introduction to Cherednik algebras, and to review the web of connections between them and other…
"The hardest logic puzzle ever" presented by George Boolos became a target for philosophers and logicians who tried to modify it and make it even tougher. I propose further modification of the original puzzle where part of the available…
We present an analysis of a coin-tossing problem posed by Daniel Litt which has generated some popular interest. We demonstrate a recursive identity which leads to relatively simple formulas for the excess number of wins for one player over…
This paper finally fully elaborates the tree pulldown method used by one of us (Harrington) to settle McLaughlin's conjecture. This method enables the construction of a computable tree $T_0$ whose paths are incomparable over $0^{(\alpha)}$…
Two prominent conjectures by Herbert J. Ryser have been falsely attributed to a somewhat obscure conference proceedings that he wrote in German. Here we provide a translation of that paper and try to correct the historical record at least…
This article, based on a talk, treats some elementary, but not completely simple examples from probability. They concern multiple birthday coincidences, throwing dice, the combinatorics of the German card game "Doppelkopf", and the…
We introduce a new family of one-player games, involving the movement of coins from one configuration to another. Moves are restricted so that a coin can be placed only in a position that is adjacent to at least two other coins. The goal of…
For many years, I have been collecting math jokes and posting them on my website. I have more than 400 jokes there. In this paper, which is an extended version of my talk at the G4G15, I would like to present 66 of them.
We introduce and summarise results from the recent paper 'Biased random walk on the trace of biased random walk on the trace of ...', which was written jointly with M. P. Holmes (University of Melbourne). We also present additional…
The problem of the malicious ma\^{i}tre d' is introduced and solved by Peter Winkler in his book Mathematical Puzzles: A Connoisseur's Collection [1]. This problem is about a ma\^{i}tre d' seating diners around a table, trying to maximize…
We discuss a problem initially thought for the Mathematical Olympiad but which has several interpretations. The recurrence sequences involved in this problem may be generalized to recurrence sequences related to a much larger set of…
In 1973 Fraenkel discovered interesting sequences which split the positive integers. These sequences became famous, because of a related unsolved conjecture. Here we construct combinatorial games, with `playable' rulesets, with these…
The classical platonist / formalist dilemma in philosophy of mathematics can be expressed in lay terms as a deceptively naive question: \emph{Is new mathematics discovered or invented? Using examples from my own mathematical work during the…
Reasoning about unpredicted change consists in explaining observations by events; we propose here an approach for explaining time-stamped observations by surprises, which are simple events consisting in the change of the truth value of a…
Outer billiards is a simple dynamical system based on a convex planar shape. The Moser-Neumann question, first posed by B.H. Neumann around 1960, asks if there exists a planar shape for which outer billiards has an unbounded orbit. The…
Inspired by the theory of desirable gambles that is used to model uncertainty in the field of imprecise probabilities, I present a theory of desirable things. Its aim is to model a subject's beliefs about which things are desirable. What…
Throughout history, recreational mathematics has always played a prominent role in advancing research. Following in this tradition, in this paper we extend some recent work with crazy sequential representations of numbers- equations made of…