Related papers: Emptying Sets: The Cookie Monster Problem

We consider the following problem: Given a set S of at most n elements from a universe of size m, represent it in memory as a bit string so that membership queries of the form "Is x in S?" can be answered by making at most t probes into the…

Within the replica framework we study analytically the instance space of the number partitioning problem. This classic integer programming problem consists of partitioning a sequence of N positive real numbers $\{a_1, a_2,..., a_N}$ (the…

Given a set of $n$ integer-valued coin types and a target value $t$, the well-known change-making problem asks for the minimum number of coins that sum to $t$, assuming an unlimited number of coins in each type. In the more general…

In this paper, we consider a game played on a rectangular $m \times n$ gridded chocolate bar. Each move, a player breaks the bar along a grid line. Each move after that consists of taking any piece of chocolate and breaking it again along…

Given two sets $A$ and $B$ of integers, we consider the problem of finding a set $S \subseteq A$ of the smallest possible cardinality such the greatest common divisor of the elements of $S \cup B$ equals that of those of $A \cup B$. The…

Unbounded SubsetSum is a classical textbook problem: given integers $w_1,w_2,\cdots,w_n\in [1,u],~c,u$, we need to find if there exists $m_1,m_2,\cdots,m_n\in \mathbb{N}$ satisfying $c=\sum_{i=1}^n w_im_i$. In its all-target version, $t\in…

Suppose that two independent sets $I$ and $J$ of a graph with $\vert I \vert = \vert J \vert$ are given, and a token is placed on each vertex in $I$. The Sliding Token problem is to determine whether there exists a sequence of independent…

Let $\mathcal P(S)$ be the semigroup obtained by equipping the family of all non-empty subsets of a (multiplicatively written) semigroup $S$ with the operation of setwise multiplication induced by $S$ itself. We call a subsemigroup $P$ of…

In this paper we introduce the concept of completeness of sets. We study this property on the set of integers. We examine how this property is preserved as we carry out various operations compatible with sets. We also introduce the problem…

The following is shown : Let $S=\{a_1,a_2,..,a_{2n}\}$ be a subset of a totally ordered commutative semi-group $(G,*,\leq)$ with $a_1\leq a_2\leq...\leq a_{2n}$. Provided that a system of $n$ $a_{i_k} * a_{j_k}\ (a_{i_k}, a_{j_k} \in G ;\ 1…

The $k$-deck problem is concerned with finding the smallest positive integer $S(k)$ such that there exist at least two strings of length $S(k)$ that share the same $k$-deck, i.e., the multiset of subsequences of length $k$. We introduce the…

This work is about a partition problem which is an instance of the distance magic graph labeling problem. Given positive integers $n,k$ and $p_1\le p_2\le \cdots\le p_k$ such that $p_1+\cdots+p_k=n$ and $k$ divides $\sum_{i=1}^ni$, we study…

Pancake flipping, a famous open problem in computer science, can be formalised as the problem of sorting a permutation of positive integers using as few prefix reversals as possible. In that context, a prefix reversal of length k reverses…

We study how efficiently a $k$-element set $S\subseteq[n]$ can be learned from a uniform superposition $|S\rangle$ of its elements. One can think of $|S\rangle=\sum_{i\in S}|i\rangle/\sqrt{|S|}$ as the quantum version of a uniformly random…

Partial mutual exclusion is the drinking philosophers problem for complete graphs. It is the problem that a process may enter a critical section CS of its code only when some finite set nbh of other processes are not in their critical…

For two sets $A$ and $M$ of positive integers and for a positive integer $n$, let $p(n,A,M)$ denote the number of partitions of $n$ with parts in $A$ and multiplicities in $M$, that is, the number of representations of $n$ in the form…

The partition problem is a well-known basic NP-complete problem. We mainly consider the optimization version of it in this paper. The problem has been investigated from various perspectives for a long time and can be solved efficiently in…

In a mass partition problem, we are interested in finding equitable partitions of smooth measures in $\mathbb{R}^d$. In this manuscript, we study the problem of finding simultaneous bisections of measures using scaled copies of a prescribed…

Reid conjectured that any finite set of non-negative integers is the score set of some tournament and Yao gave a non-constructive proof of Reid's conjecture using arithmetic arguments. No constructive proof has been found since. In this…

The containment game is a full information game for two players, initialised with a set of occupied vertices in an infinite connected graph $G$. On the $t$-th turn, the first player, called Spreader, extends the occupied set to $g(t)$…