Related papers: On the Cookie Monster Problem

We define the notion of infimum of a set of points with respect to the second order cone. This problem can be showed to be equivalent to the minimum ball containing a set of balls problem and to the maximum intersecting ball problem, as…

In reconfiguration, we are given two solutions to a graph problem, such as Vertex Cover or Dominating Set, with each solu tion represented by a placement of tokens on vertices of the graph. Our task is to reconfigure one into the other…

We consider a quantum version of a well-known statistical decision problem, whose solution is, at first sight, counter-intuitive to many. In the quantum version a continuum of possible choices (rather than a finite set) has to be…

An instance of colorful k-center consists of points in a metric space that are colored red or blue, along with an integer k and a coverage requirement for each color. The goal is to find the smallest radius \r{ho} such that there exist…

In this paper we demonstrate a method for counting the number of solutions to various logic puzzles. Specifically, we remove all of the "clues" from the puzzle which help the solver to a unique solution, and instead start from an empty…

The minimum dominating set problem has wide applications in network science and related fields. It consists of assembling a node set of global minimum size such that any node of the network is either in this set or is adjacent to at least…

We consider the problem of fairly dividing a heterogeneous cake between a number of players with different tastes. In this setting, it is known that fairness requirements may result in a suboptimal division from the social welfare…

Lights Out is a single-player electronic handheld game from the 1990s that features a 5 by 5 grid of light-up buttons. The game begins with some lights on and others off. The goal is to turn off all lights but pressing a button changes its…

Suppose $k$ balls are dropped into $n$ boxes independently with uniform probability, where $n, k$ are large with ratio approximately equal to some positive real $\lambda$. The maximum box count has a counterintuitive behavior: first of all,…

We consider a generalisation of the classical coupon collector problem. We define a super-coupon to be any $s$-subset of a universe of $n$ coupons. In each round, a random $r$-subset from the universe is drawn and all its $s$-subsets are…

We consider the problem of determining the maximum number of moves required to sort a permutation of $[n]$ using cut-and-paste operations, in which a segment is cut out and then pasted into the remaining string, possibly reversed. We give…

A deck of $n$ cards is shuffled by repeatedly moving the top card to one of the bottom $k_n$ positions uniformly at random. We give upper and lower bounds on the total variation mixing time for this shuffle as $k_n$ ranges from a constant…

Given a set of $n$ labeled points in general position in the plane, we remove all of its points one by one. At each step, one point from the convex hull of the remaining set is erased. In how many ways can the process be carried out? The…

A pebbling move on a graph removes two pebbles at a vertex and adds one pebble at an adjacent vertex. Rubbling is a version of pebbling where an additional move is allowed. In this new move, one pebble each is removed at vertices $v$ and…

We play a variation of Nim on stacks of tokens. Take your favorite increasing sequence of positive integers and color the tokens according to the following rule. Each token on a level that corresponds to a number in the sequence is colored…

Let surreal numbers be defined by means of sign sequences. We give a proof that if $S < T$ are sets of surreals, then there is some surreal $w$ such that $S < w < T$. The classical proof is simplified by observing that, for every set $S$ of…

We consider the number of passes a permutation needs to take through a stack if we only pop the appropriate output values and start over with the remaining entries in their original order. We define a permutation $\pi$ to be $k$-pass…

The Maker-Breaker total domination number, $\gamma_{\rm MBT}(G)$, of a graph $G$ is introduced as the minimum number of moves of Dominator to win the Maker-Breaker total domination game, provided that he has a winning strategy and is the…

Let a tribonacci sequence be a sequence of integers satisfying $a_k=a_{k-1}+a_{k-2}+a_{k-3}$ for all $k\ge 4$. For any positive integers $k$ and $n$, denote by $f_k(n)$ the number of tribonacci sequences with $a_1, a_2, a_3>0$ and with…

An interesting open problem in number theory asks whether it is possible to walk to infinity on primes, where each term in the sequence has one more digit than the previous. In this paper, we study its variation where we walk on the…