Related papers: Cutting cakes and kissing circles
Relying on configuration spaces and equivariant topology, we study a general "cooperative envy-free division problem". A group of players want to cut a "cake" $I=[0,1]$ and divide among themselves the pieces in an envy-free manner. Once the…
In the March 2025 issue of Pour la Science, Jean-Paul Delahaye described a wonderful solution to the following problem: How many ways can you divide a 3 by 2n rectangle into two connected, congruent pieces? We show that this problem can be…
We consider the classic cake-cutting problem of producing envy-free allocations, restricted to the case of four agents. The problem asks for a partition of the cake to four agents, so that every agent finds her piece at least as valuable as…
In 1907, Henry Ernest Dudeney posed a puzzle: ``cut any equilateral triangle \dots\ into as few pieces as possible that will fit together and form a perfect square'' (without overlap, via translation and rotation). Four weeks later, Dudeney…
Just how many different connected shapes result from slicing a cube along some of its edges and unfolding it into the plane? In this article we answer this question by viewing the cube both as a surface and as a graph of vertices and edges.…
Motivated by indoor localization by tripwire lasers, we study the problem of cutting a polygon into small-size pieces, using the chords of the polygon. Several versions are considered, depending on the definition of the "size" of a piece.…
Consider the $n$-cube graph with vertices $\{-1,1\}^n$ and edges connecting vertices with hamming distance $1$. How many hyperplanes in $\mathbb{R}^n$ are needed in order to dissect all edges? We show that at least…
We describe a new sampling-based method to determine cuts in an undirected graph. For a graph (V, E), its cycle space is the family of all subsets of E that have even degree at each vertex. We prove that with high probability, sampling the…
We propose new algebraic methods for extracting cylinders and cones from minimal point sets, including oriented points. More precisely, we are interested in computing efficiently cylinders through a set of three points, one of them being…
We consider the well-studied cake cutting problem in which the goal is to identify a fair allocation based on a minimal number of queries from the agents. The problem has attracted considerable attention within various branches of computer…
Consider $n$ players having preferences over the connected pieces of a cake, identified with the interval $[0,1]$. A classical theorem, found independently by Stromquist and by Woodall in 1980, ensures that, under mild conditions, it is…
In cake-cutting, strategy-proofness is a very costly requirement in terms of fairness: for n=2 it implies a dictatorial allocation, whereas for n > 2 it requires that one agent receives no cake. We show that a weaker version of this…
We study the problem of fair cake-cutting where each agent receives a connected piece of the cake. A division of the cake is deemed fair if it is equitable, which means that all agents derive the same value from their assigned piece. Prior…
An unfolding of a polyhedron is produced by cutting the surface and flattening to a single, connected, planar piece without overlap (except possibly at boundary points). It is a long unsolved problem to determine whether every polyhedron…
We answer a question of David Hilbert: given two circles it is not possible in general to construct their centers using only a straightedge. On the other hand, we give infinitely many families of pairs of circles for which such construction…
Alice and Bob want to cut a cake; however, in contrast to the usual problems of fair division, they want to cut it unfairly. More precisely, they want to cut it in ratio $(a:b)$. (We can assume gcd(a,b)=1.) Let f(a,b) be the number of cuts…
The article considers solving the problem of precision cutting of honeycomb blocks. The urgency of using arbitrary shapes application cutting from honey-comb blocks made of modern composite materials is substantiated. The problem is to…
We investigate an idealized model for the size reduction and smoothing of a polygonal rock due to repeated chipping at corners. Each chip is sufficiently small so that only a single corner and a fraction of its two adjacent sides are cut…
Distance measuring is a very important task in digital geometry and digital image processing. Due to our natural approach to geometry we think of the set of points that are equally far from a given point as a Euclidean circle. Using the…
These notes are based on the lectures given by the author during Winter Braids IX in Reims in March 2019. We discuss slice knots and why they are interesting, as well as some ways to decide if a given knot is or is not slice. We describe…