Related papers: Concerning the bookshelf problem
We consider the problem of stochastic flow of multiple particles traveling on a closed loop, with a constraint that particles move without passing. We use a Markov chain description that reduces the problem to a generalized random walk on a…
We consider a card guessing game with complete feedback. An ordered deck of $n$ cards labeled $1$ up to $n$ is shelf-shuffled exactly one time. One after the other a single card is drawn from the shuffled deck. The guesser makes has guess…
The paperfolding sequences form an uncountable class of infinite sequences over the alphabet $\{ -1, 1 \}$ that describe the sequence of folds arising from iterated folding of a piece of paper, followed by unfolding. In this note we observe…
We consider the problem of packing a family of disks "on a shelf", that is, such that each disk touches the $x$-axis from above and such that no two disks overlap. We prove that the problem of minimizing the distance between the leftmost…
We investigate the utility of employing multiple buffers in solving a class of rearrangement problems with pick-n-swap manipulation primitives. In this problem, objects stored randomly in a lattice are to be sorted using a robot arm with…
Consider a stack of books, containing both white and black books. Suppose that we want to sort them out, putting the white books on the right, and the black books on the left (fig.~1). This will be done by a finite sequence of elementary…
The number of ways to place $q$ nonattacking queens, bishops, or similar chess pieces on an $n\times n$ square chessboard is essentially a quasipolynomial function of $n$ (by Part I of this series). The period of the quasipolynomial is…
The present paper presents and proves a proposition concerning the time complexity of finite languages. It is shown herein, that for any finite language (a language for which the set of words composing it is finite) there is a Turing…
This work studies the following question: can plays in a Muller game be stopped after a finite number of moves and a winner be declared. A criterion to do this is sound if Player 0 wins an infinite-duration Muller game if and only if she…
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…
We consider a system of $N$ particles on the real line that evolves through iteration of the following steps: 1) every particle splits into two, 2) each particle jumps according to a prescribed displacement distribution supported on the…
We introduce a new family of one-player games, involving the movement of coins from one configuration to another. Moves are restricted so that a coin can be placed only in a position that is adjacent to at least two other coins. The goal of…
An inglenook puzzle is a classic shunting (switching) puzzle often found on model railway layouts. A collection of wagons sits in a fan of sidings with a limited length headshunt (lead track). The aim of the puzzle is to rearrange the…
This paper presents two novel approaches to solve the classic simple harmonic motion. In one approach, the distance between the equilibrium position and the maximal displacement is divided into N equal segments. In each segment, the mass…
We consider in this article an Elephant Random Walk evolving in the plane. Specifically, this is a reinforced stochastic process in which the $n$th step is given by a random rotation of one of the previous steps chosen uniformly at random.…
Zeno's ancient paradox depicts a race between swift Achilles and a slow tortoise with a head start. Zeno argued that Achilles could never overtake the tortoise, as at each step Achilles arrived at the tortoise's former position, the…
This paper introduces a simple Markov process inspired by the problem of quasicrystal growth. It acts over two-letter words by randomly performing \emph{flips}, a local transformation which exchanges two consecutive different letters. More…
The Collatz sequence for a given natural number $N$ is generated by repeatedly applying the map $N$ $\rightarrow$ $3N+1$ if $N$ is odd and $N$ $\rightarrow$ $N/2$ if $N$ is even. One elusive open problem in Mathematics is whether all such…
Consider $n$ independent, biased coins, each with a known probability of heads. Presented with an ordering of these coins, flip (i.e., toss) each coin once, in that order, until we have observed both a *head* and a *tail*, or flipped all…
The Knight's Tour problem consists of finding a Hamiltonian path for the knight on a given set of points so that the knight can visit exactly once every vertex of the mentioned set. In the present paper, we provide a $5$-dimensional…