Related papers: A Note on a Picture-Hanging Puzzle

We consider the number of vertices that must be removed from a graph G in order that the remaining subgraph has no component with more than k vertices. Our principal observation is that, if G is a sparse random graph or a random regular…

Let $P\subset \R^2$ be a set of $n$ points in general position. A peeling sequence of $P$ is a list of its points, such that if we remove the points from $P$ in that order, we always remove the next point from the convex hull of the…

Let n be an integer, and consider finite sequences of elements of the group Z/nZ x Z/nZ. Such a sequence is called zero-sum free, if no subsequence has sum zero. It is known that the maximal length of such a zero-sum free sequence is 2n-2,…

Garside-theoretical solutions to the conjugacy problem in braid groups depend on the determination of a characteristic subset of the conjugacy class of any given braid, e.g. the sliding circuit set. It is conjectured that, among rigid…

We introduce and examine the {\em Holiday Gathering Problem} which models the difficulty that couples have when trying to decide with which parents should they spend the holiday. Our goal is to schedule the family gatherings so that the…

The worst-case complexity of group-theoretic algorithms has been studied for a long time. Generic-case complexity, or complexity on random inputs, was introduced and studied relatively recently. In this paper, we address the average-case…

Consider a configuration of pebbles distributed on the vertices of a connected graph of order $n$. A pebbling step consists of removing two pebbles from a given vertex and placing one pebble on an adjacent vertex. A distribution of pebbles…

The girth of a graph is defined as the length of a shortest cycle in the graph. A $(k; g)$-cage is a graph of minimum order among all $k$-regular graphs with girth $g$. A cycle $C$ in a graph $G$ is termed nonseparating if the graph…

Howie and Duncan observed that a word in a free product with length at least two and which is not a proper power can be decomposed as a product of two cyclic subwords each of which is uniquely positioned. Using this property, they proved…

A subset of a group is characteristic if it is invariant under every automorphism of the group. We study word length in fundamental groups of closed hyperbolic surfaces with respect to characteristic generating sets consisting of a finite…

For an integer sequence (with even sum), the closer that the sequence is to being regular, the more likely that the sequence is graphic. But how regular must a sequence be before it must always be graphic? We show that for many sequences if…

Given a distribution of pebbles on the vertices of a graph, say that we can pebble a vertex if a pebble is left on it after some sequence of moves, each of which takes two pebbles from some vertex and places one on an adjacent vertex. A…

We study the time that the simple exclusion process on the complete graph needs to reach equilibrium in terms of total variation distance. For the graph with n vertices and 1<<k<n/2 particles we show that the mixing time is of order…

In the famous network creation game of Fabrikant et al. a set of agents play a game to build a connected graph. The $n$ agents form the vertex set $V$ of the graph and each vertex $v\in V$ buys a set $E_v$ of edges inducing a graph…

For a given base class of sequence-to-next-token generators, we consider learning prompt-to-answer mappings obtained by iterating a fixed, time-invariant generator for multiple steps, thus generating a chain-of-thought, and then taking the…

How do neural networks trained over sequences acquire the ability to perform structured operations, such as arithmetic, geometric, and algorithmic computation? To gain insight into this question, we introduce the sequential group…

A sequence is nonrepetitive if it does not contain two adjacent identical blocks. The remarkable construction of Thue asserts that 3 symbols are enough to build an arbitrarily long nonrepetitive sequence. It is still not settled whether the…

Let us call a sequence of numbers heapable if they can be sequentially inserted to form a binary tree with the heap property, where each insertion subsequent to the first occurs at a leaf of the tree, i.e. below a previously placed number.…

Let $M_n$ be the minimal position at generation $n$, of a real-valued branching random walk in the boundary case. As $n \to \infty$, $M_n- {3 \over 2} \log n$ is tight (see [1][9][2]). We establish here a law of iterated logarithm for the…

Edge-matching problems, also called edge matching puzzles, are abstractions of placement problems with neighborhood conditions. Pieces with colored edges have to be placed on a board such that adjacent edges have the same color. The problem…