Related papers: A path formula for the sock sorting problem

In this paper, we discuss a stochastic decision problem of optimally selecting the order in which to try $n$ opportunities that may yield an uncertain reward in the future. The motivation came out from pure curiosity, after an informal…

A new unequal probability sampling method is proposed. This method is sequential. The decision to select or not each unit is made based on the order in which the units appear. A variant of this method allows selecting a sample from a…

A sum where each of the $N$ summands can be independently chosen from two choices yields $2^N$ possible summation outcomes. There is an $\mathcal{O}(K^2)$-algorithm that finds the $K$ smallest/largest of these sums by evading the…

We present a complete solution to the so-called tennis ball problem, which is equivalent to counting lattice paths in the plane that use North and East steps and lie between certain boundaries. The solution takes the form of explicit…

We prove an explicit formula to count the partitions of $n$ whose product of the summands is at most $n$. In the process, we also deduce a result to count the multiplicative partitions of $n$.

In this paper, we first obtain some analogues of a formula of Zagier (1995) and Stanley (2011). For instance, we prove that the number of pairs of $n$-cycles whose product has $k$ cycles and has $m$ given elements contained in distinct…

The subject of this paper is the simple random walk on $\mathbb{Z}$. We give a very simple answer to the following problem: under the condition that a random walk has already spent $\alpha$-percent of the traveling time on the positive side…

Order picking is the problem of collecting a set of products in a warehouse in a minimum amount of time. It is currently a major bottleneck in supply-chain because of its cost in time and labor force. This article presents two exact and…

We consider a matching problem, which is meaningful in team competitions, as well as in information theory, recommender systems, and assignment problems. In the competitions which we study, each competitor in a team order plays a match with…

A random walk with counterbalanced steps is a process of partial sums $\check S(n)=\check X_1+ \cdots + \check X_n$ whose steps $\check X_n$ are given recursively as follows. For each $n\geq 2$, with a fixed probability $p$, $\check X_n$ is…

In this paper, we use techniques of enumerative combinatorics to study the following problem: we count the number of ways to split $n$ balls into nonempty, ordered bins so that the most crowded bin has exactly $k$ balls. We find closed…

We consider the set of permutations that are sorted after two passes through a pop stack. We characterize these permutations in terms of forbidden patterns (classical and barred) and enumerate them according to the ascent statistic. Then we…

We derive a path counting formula for two-dimensional lattice path model with filter restrictions in the presence of long steps, source and target points of which are situated near the filters. This solves a problem of finding an explicit…

This paper considers pairs of optimization problems that are defined from a single input and for which it is desired to find a good approximation to either one of the problems. In many instances, it is possible to efficiently find an…

Using earlier results we prove a formula for the number $W_{(n,k)}$ of 2-stack sortable permutations of length $n$ with $k$ runs, or in other words, $k-1$ descents. This formula will yield the suprising fact that there are as many 2-stack…

This paper addresses the anytime sorting problem, aiming to develop algorithms providing tentative estimates of the sorted list at each execution step. Comparisons are treated as steps, and the Spearman's footrule metric evaluates…

We give a bijection between permutations of length 2n and certain pairs of Dyck paths with labels on the down steps. The bijection arises from a game in which two players alternate selecting from a set of 2n items: the permutation encodes…

This work shows that the following problems are equivalent, both in theory and in practice: - median filtering: given an $n$-element vector, compute the sliding window median with window size $k$, - piecewise sorting: given an $n$-element…

The $k$-th power of the adjacency matrix of a simple undirected graph represents the number of walks with length $k$ between pairs of nodes. As a walk where no node repeats, a path is a walk where each node is only visited once. The set of…

We study a sorting machine consisting of two stacks in series where the first stack has the added restriction such that entries in the stack must be in decreasing order from top to bottom. We give the basis of the class of permutations that…