Related papers: Rounds in a combinatorial search problem

We show the existence of regular combinatorial objects which previously were not known to exist. Specifically, for a wide range of the underlying parameters, we show the existence of non-trivial orthogonal arrays, t-designs, and t-wise…

The inverse problem of general rough sets, considered by the present author in some of her earlier papers, in one of its manifestations is essentially the question of when an agent's view about crisp and non crisp objects over a set of…

Given a system of equations in a "random" finitely generated subgroup of the braid group, we show how to find a small ordered list of elements in the subgroup, which contains a solution to the equations with a significant probability.…

Dual Bernstein polynomials find many applications in approximation theory, computational mathematics, numerical analysis and computer-aided geometric design. In this context, one of the main problems is fast and accurate evaluation both of…

A special inverse monoid is one defined by a presentation where all the defining relations have the form $r = 1$. By a result of Ivanov Margolis and Meakin the word problem for such an inverse monoid can often be reduced to the word problem…

A neat 1972 result of Pohl asserts that [3n/2]-2 comparisons are sufficient, and also necessary in the worst case, for finding both the minimum and the maximum of an n-element totally ordered set. The set is accessed via an oracle for…

We study the integrals of type $I(a)=\int_{O_n}\prod u_{ij}^{a_{ij}}\,du$, depending on a matrix $a\in M_{p\times q}(\mathbb N)$, whose exact computation is an open problem. Our results are as follows: (1) an extension of the "elementary…

We solve two long-standing open problems on word equations. Firstly, we prove that a one-variable word equation with constants has either at most three or an infinite number of solutions. The existence of such a bound had been conjectured,…

We present an standard constraints generation algorithm to find an explicit set whose robustness is equal to the robustness of the feasible solution set of a combinatorial optimization problem with cost uncertainty. Computational experience…

Combinatorial games lead to several interesting, clean problems in algorithms and complexity theory, many of which remain open. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the area to encourage further research. In particular, we…

The Pandora's Box problem models the search for the best alternative when evaluation is costly. In the simplest variant, a decision maker is presented with $n$ boxes, each associated with a cost of inspection and a hidden random reward. The…

We present a number of positive and negative results for variants of the matroid secretary problem. Most notably, we design a constant-factor competitive algorithm for the "random assignment" model where the weights are assigned randomly to…

Let $n$ be a positive integer and let $A$ be nonempty finite set of positive integers. We say that $A$ is relatively prime if $\gcd(A) =1$ and that $A$ is relatively prime to $n$ if $\gcd(A,n)=1$. In this work we count the number of…

We study diophantine equations of the form ${a_1 + \ldots + a_n = 0}$ where the $a_i$'s are assumed to be coprime and to satisfy certain subsum conditions. We are interested in the limit superior of the qualities of the admissible solutions…

In an award-winning expository article, V. Pozdnyakov and J.M. Steele gave a beautiful demonstration of the ramifications of a basic bijection for permutations. The aim of this note is to connect this correspondence to a seemingly unrelated…

This article studies the number of ways of selecting $k$ objects arranged in $p$ circles of sizes $n_1,\ldots,n_p$ such that no two selected ones have less than $s$ objects between them. If $n_i\geq sk+1$ for all $1\leq i \leq p$, this…

Many combinatorial optimization problems are often considered intractable to solve exactly or by approximation. An example of such problem is maximum clique which -- under standard assumptions in complexity theory -- cannot be solved in…

The existence and multiplicity of positive periodic solutions for first non-autonomous singular systems are established with superlinearity or sublinearity assumptions at infinity for an appropriately chosen parameter. The proof of our…

Let $R$ be an associative ring with identity and let $N$ be a nil ideal of $R$. It is shown that units of $R/N$ can be lifted to units in $R$. Under some mild conditions on the ring, a procedure is given to determine those lifted units in a…

Suppose that an infinite set $A$ occupies at most $\frac{1}{2}(p+1)$ residue classes modulo $p$, for every sufficiently large prime $p$. The squares, or more generally the integer values of any quadratic, are an example of such a set. By…