Related papers: Lower bounds on the M\"{u}nchhausen problem

A recent upper bound by Le and Solomon [STOC '23] has established that every $n$-node graph has a $(1+\varepsilon)(2k-1)$-spanner with lightness $O(\varepsilon^{-1} n^{1/k})$. This bound is optimal up to its dependence on $\varepsilon$; the…

If $G$ is a finite Abelian group, define $s_{k}(G)$ to be the minimal $m$ such that a sequence of $m$ elements in $G$ always contains a $k$-element subsequence which sums to zero. Recently Bitz et al. proved that if $n = exp(G)$, then…

We prove new upper bounds for the number of representations of an arbitrary rational number as a sum of three unit fractions. In particular, for fixed $m$ there are at most $\mathcal{O}_{\epsilon}(n^{3/5+\epsilon})$ solutions of…

We consider the classical Steenrod problem on realization of integral homology classes by continuous images of smooth oriented manifolds. Let $k(n)$ be the smallest positive integer such that any integral $n$-dimensional homology class…

Let $K_n$ denote the set of all nonsingular $n\times n$ lower triangular $(0,1)$-matrices. Hong and Loewy (2004) introduced the number sequence $$ c_n=\min\{\lambda\mid\lambda~\text{is an eigenvalue of}~XX^{\rm T},~X\in K_n\},\quad…

In this paper, given a simple linear recurrence sequence of algebraic numbers, which has either a dominant characteristic root or exactly two characteristic roots of maximal modulus, we give some explicit lower bounds for the index beyond…

We define a family of binary outcome $n$-party $m\leq n$ settings per party Bell inequalities whose members require the least detection efficiency for their violation among all known inequalities of the same type. This gives upper bounds…

Let $\{b_{k}(n)\}_{n=0}^{\infty}$ be the Bell numbers of order $k$. It is proved that the sequence $\{b_{k}(n)/n!\}_{n=0}^{\infty}$ is log-concave and the sequence $\{b_{k}(n)\}_{n=0}^{\infty}$ is log-convex, or equivalently, the following…

Shannon's entropy is a clear lower bound for statistical compression. The situation is not so well understood for dictionary-based compression. A plausible lower bound is $b$, the least number of phrases of a general bidirectional parse of…

We investigate a coin-weighing puzzle that appeared in the all-Russian math Olympiad in 2000. We liked the puzzle because the methods of analysis differ from classical coin-weighing puzzles. We generalize the puzzle by varying the number of…

We investigate the order $\rho$ of the four entire functions in the Nevanlinna matrix of an indeterminate Hamburger moment sequence. We give an upper estimate for $\rho$ which is explicit in terms of the parameters of the canonical system…

Arrangements of pseudolines are classic objects in discrete and computational geometry. They have been studied with increasing intensity since their introduction almost 100 years ago. The study of the number $B_n$ of non-isomorphic simple…

A non-empty word $w$ is a \emph{border} of a word $u$ if $\vert w\vert<\vert u\vert$ and $w$ is both a prefix and a suffix of $u$. A word $u$ is \emph{privileged} if $\vert u\vert\leq 1$ or if $u$ has a privileged border $w$ that appears…

We study the repeated balls-into-bins process introduced by Becchetti, Clementi, Natale, Pasquale and Posta (2019). This process starts with $m$ balls arbitrarily distributed across $n$ bins. At each round $t=1,2,\ldots$, one ball is…

In this paper we investigate the problem of sorting a set of $n$ coins, each with distinct but unknown weights, using an unusual scale. The classical version of this problem, which has been well-studied, gives the user a binary scale,…

The nonnegative rank of an entrywise nonnegative matrix A of size mxn is the smallest integer r such that A can be written as A=UV where U is mxr and V is rxn and U and V are both nonnegative. The nonnegative rank arises in different areas…

This paper studies eigenvalues of the buckling problem of arbitrary order on compact domains in Euclidean spaces and spheres. We prove universal bounds for the $k$-th eigenvalue in terms of the lower ones independent of the domains. Our…

Motivated by the search for methods to establish strong minimality of certain low order algebraic differential equations, a measure of how far a finite rank stationary type is from being minimal is introduced and studied: The {\em degree of…

There are $n$ bags with coins that look the same. Each bag has an infinite number of coins and all coins in the same bag weigh the same amount. Coins in different bags weigh 1, 2, 3, and so on to $n$ grams exactly. There is a unique label…

The extremal problem of hypergraph colorings related to Erd\H{o}s--Hajnal property $B$-problem is considered. Let $k$ be a natural number. The problem is to find the value of $m_k(n)$ equal to the minimal number of edges in an $n$-uniform…