Related papers: On the Cookie Monster Problem
In this paper we study the following problems: given a finite number of nonempty closed subsets of a normed space, find a ball with the smallest radius that encloses all of the sets, and find a ball with the smallest radius that intersects…
Let a stick be broken at random at n-1 points to form n pieces. We consider three problems on forming k-gons with k out of these n pieces, and show how a statistical approach, through a linear transformation of variables, yields simple…
We study the Hausdorff and box-counting dimensions of cookie-cutter-like sets formed by sequential dynamics of a finite number of expanding maps. Under some natural conditions, these dimensions turn out to be the minimum and maximum of the…
In many applications we want to find the number of clusters in a dataset. A common approach is to use the penalized k-means algorithm with an additive penalty term linear in the number of clusters. An open problem is estimating the value of…
Magic squares are a fascinating mathematical challenge that has intrigued mathematicians for centuries. Given a positive (and possibly large) integer \( n \), one of the main challenges that still remains is to find, within a computational…
The maximum possible number of non-overlapping unit spheres that can touch a unit sphere in $n$ dimensions is called kissing number. The problem for finding kissing numbers is closely connected to the more general problems of finding bounds…
In this note, we introduce a distributed twist on the classic coupon collector problem: a set of $m$ collectors wish to each obtain a set of $n$ coupons; for this, they can each sample coupons uniformly at random, but can also meet in…
Consider a bin containing $n$ balls colored with two colors. In a $k$-query, $k$ balls are selected by a questioner and the oracle's reply is related (depending on the computation model being considered) to the distribution of colors of the…
We illustrate how to invite and excite students about research by exploring higher-dimensional generalizations of the classical egg drop problem, in which the goal is to locate a critical breaking point using the fewest number of trials.…
Every day, 34 million Chicken McNuggets are sold worldwide. At most McDonalds locations in the United States today, Chicken McNuggets are sold in packs of 4, 6, 10, 20, 40, and 50 pieces. However, shortly after their introduction in 1979…
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…
Magic numbers in finite particle systems correspond to specific system sizes that allow configurations with low free energy, often exhibiting closed surface shells to maximize the number of nearest neighbors. Since their discovery in atomic…
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…
We provide an explicit upper bound on the number of Reidemeister moves required to pass between two diagrams of the same link. This leads to a conceptually simple solution to the equivalence problem for links.
In this paper, we perform a minimalistic quantization of the classical game of tic-tac-toe, by allowing superpositions of classical moves. In order for the quantum game to reduce properly to the classical game, we require legal quantum…
We analyze Solo Chess puzzles, where the input is an $n \times n$ board containing some standard Chess pieces of the same color, and the goal is to make a sequence of capture moves to reduce down to a single piece. Prior work analyzes this…
Consider the following process whereby $n$ balls are distributed into $k$ bins. Repeatedly, a ball is removed from a non-empty bin chosen uniformly at random. The process ends when a single non-empty bin remains. Will Ma…
We study the query complexity of cake cutting and give lower and upper bounds for computing approximately envy-free, perfect, and equitable allocations with the minimum number of cuts. The lower bounds are tight for computing connected…
A picture-hanging puzzle is the task of hanging a framed picture with a wire around a set of nails in such a way that it can remain hanging on certain specified sets of nails, but will fall if any more are removed. The classical brain…
Break a stick at random at $n-1$ points to obtain $n$ pieces. We give an explicit formula for the probability that every choice of $k$ segments from this broken stick can form a $k$-gon, generalizing similar work. The method we use can be…