Related papers: On the grasshopper problem with signed jumps
The 6th problem of the 50th International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO), held in Germany, 2009, is called 'the grasshopper problem'. To this problem Kos developed theory from unique viewpoints by reference of Noga Alon's combinatorial…
We introduce and physically motivate the following problem in geometric combinatorics, originally inspired by analysing Bell inequalities. A grasshopper lands at a random point on a planar lawn of area one. It then jumps once, a fixed…
AI-assisted theorem proving can now generate substantial Lean developments for olympiad-level mathematics, but the evidential status of such developments depends on which declarations are actually verified. This paper reports a Lean 4…
The International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) is perhaps the most celebrated mental competition in the world and as such is among the greatest grand challenges for Artificial Intelligence (AI). The IMO Grand Challenge, recently formulated,…
The International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) is widely regarded as the world championship of high-school mathematics. IMO problems are renowned for their difficulty and novelty, demanding deep insight, creativity, and rigor. Although large…
Let $P$ be an $N$-element point set in the plane. Consider $N$ (pointlike) grasshoppers sitting at different points of $P$. In a "legal" move, any one of them can jump over another, and land on its other side at exactly the same distance.…
A jump is a pair of consecutive elements in an extension of a poset which are incomparable in the original poset. The arboreal jump number is an NP-hard problem that aims to find an arboreal extension of a given poset with minimum number of…
This paper is a supplement to a talk for mathematics teachers given at the 2016 LSU Mathematics Contest for High School Students. The paper covers more details and aspects than could be covered in the talk. We start with an interesting…
We solve an open problem of Diaconis that asks what are the largest orders of $p_n$ and $q_n$ such that $Z_n,$ the $p_n\times q_n$ upper left block of a random matrix $\boldsymbol{\Gamma}_n$ which is uniformly distributed on the orthogonal…
The classical no-three-in-line problem asks for the largest number (D(n)) of points that can be chosen from an (n \times n) grid with no three collinear. We study the checkerboard-restricted variant in which all chosen points lie in one…
We develop several efficient algorithms for the classical \emph{Matrix Scaling} problem, which is used in many diverse areas, from preconditioning linear systems to approximation of the permanent. On an input $n\times n$ matrix $A$, this…
For all positive even integers $n$, graphs of order $n$ with degree sequence \begin{equation*} S_{n}:1,2,\dots,n/2,n/2,n/2+1,n/2+2,\dots,n-1 \end{equation*} naturally arose in the study of a labeling problem in \cite{IMO}. This fact…
We use topological ideas to show that, assuming the conjecture of Erd\"(o)s on subsets of positive integers having no $p$ terms in arithmetic progression (A. P.), there must exist a subset $M_p$ of positive integers with no $p$ terms in A.…
We consider the ideal orientation problem in planar graphs. In this problem, we are given an undirected graph $G$ with positive edge lengths and $k$ pairs of distinct vertices $(s_1, t_1), \dots, (s_k, t_k)$ called terminals, and we want to…
We study a combinatorial game derived from a problem in the German National Mathematics Competition. In this game, two players take turns removing numbers from a finite set of natural numbers, aiming to satisfy a certain divisibility…
We introduce the following variant of the Gale-Berlekamp switching game. Let $P$ be a set of n noncollinear points in the plane, each of them having weight $+1$ or $-1$. At each step, we pick a line $\ell$ passing through at least two…
The No-Three-In-Line problem asks for the maximum number of points that can be placed on an n by n grid with no three collinear, representing a famous problem in combinatorial geometry. While classical methods like Integer Linear…
We consider versions of the grasshopper problem (Goulko and Kent, 2017) on the circle and the sphere, which are relevant to Bell inequalities. For a circle of circumference $2\pi$, we show that for unconstrained lawns of any length and…
Suppose that we are given two independent sets $I_0$ and $I_r$ of a graph such that $|I_0| = |I_r|$, and imagine that a token is placed on each vertex in $I_0$. The token jumping problem is to determine whether there exists a sequence of…
Zeckendorf proved that every positive integer $n$ can be written uniquely as the sum of non-adjacent Fibonacci numbers. We use this to create a two-player game. Given a fixed integer $n$ and an initial decomposition of $n = n F_1$, the two…