Related papers: Solution of the 15 puzzle problem
We study several variations of line segment covering problem with axis-parallel unit squares in $I\!\!R^2$. A set $S$ of $n$ line segments is given. The objective is to find the minimum number of axis-parallel unit squares which cover at…
In this paper, we consider the partial gathering problem of mobile agents in asynchronous unidirectional rings equipped with whiteboards on nodes. The partial gathering problem is a new generalization of the total gathering problem. The…
We investigate the mathematics behind unshuffles, a type of card shuffle closely related to classical perfect shuffles. To perform an unshuffle, deal all the cards alternately into two piles and then stack the one pile on top of the other.…
We derive asymptotic formulas for the solutions of the mixed boundary value problem for the Poisson equation on the union of a thin cylindrical plate and several thin cylindrical rods. One of the ends of each rod is set into a hole in the…
In the picture-hanging puzzle we are to hang a picture so that the string loops around $n$ nails and the removal of any nail results in a fall of the picture. We show that the length of a sequence representing an element in the free group…
We study the Torus Puzzle, a solitaire game in which the elements of an input $m \times n$ matrix need to be rearranged into a target configuration via a sequence of unit rotations (i.e., circular shifts) of rows and/or columns. Amano et…
In this thesis we introduce a new type of card shuffle called the one-sided transposition shuffle. At each step a card is chosen uniformly from the pack and then transposed with another card chosen uniformly from below it. This defines 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…
Based on recent findings by Bourguin and Peccati, we give a fourth moment type condition for an element of a free Poisson chaos of arbitrary order to converge to a free (centered) Poisson distribution. We also show that free Poisson chaos…
In the symmetric rendezvous problem two players follow the same (randomized) strategy to visit one of $n$ locations in each time step $t=0,1,2,\dots$. Their goal is to minimize the expected time until they visit the same location and thus…
Determining the mixing time of Kac's random walk on the sphere $\mathrm{S}^{n-1}$ is a long-standing open problem. We show that the total variation mixing time of Kac's walk on $\mathrm{S}^{n-1}$ is between $\frac{1}{2} \, n \log(n)$ and…
We extend a technique for lower-bounding the mixing time of card-shuffling Markov chains, and use it to bound the mixing time of the Rudvalis Markov chain, as well as two variants considered by Diaconis and Saloff-Coste. We show that in…
Zero-sum Dynkin games under Poisson constraints, where players can only stop at the event times of a Poisson process, have been studied widely in the recent literature. The constraint can be modelled in two ways: either both players share…
We propose a model of card shuffling where a pack of cards, spread as points on a square table, are repeatedly gathered locally at random spots and then spread towards a random direction. A shuffling of the cards is then obtained by…
We study mixing times for the totally asymmetric simple exclusion process (TASEP) on a segment of size $N$ with open boundaries. We focus on the maximal current phase, and prove that the mixing time is of order $N^{3/2}$, up to logarithmic…
Random walks on expander graphs were thoroughly studied, with the important motivation that, under some natural conditions, these walks mix quickly and provide an efficient method of sampling the vertices of a graph. Alon, Benjamini,…
How many shuffles are needed to mix up a deck of cards? This question may be answered in the language of a random walk on the symmetric group, $S_{52}$. This generalises neatly to the study of random walks on finite groups, themselves a…
Establishing cutoff, an abrupt transition from "not mixed" to "well mixed", is a classical topic in the theory of mixing times for Markov chains. Interest has grown recently in determining not only the existence of cutoff and the order of…
Consider $n^2-1$ unit-square blocks in an $n \times n$ square board, where each block is labeled as movable horizontally (only), movable vertically (only), or immovable -- a variation of Rush Hour with only $1 \times 1$ cars and fixed…
Particles labelled $1,...,n$ are initially arranged in increasing order. Subsequently, each pair of neighboring particles that is currently in increasing order swaps according to a Poisson process of rate 1. We analyze the asymptotic…