Related papers: On the Combinatorics of Placing Balls into Ordered…

We consider a generalization of the classical 100 Prisoner problem and its variant, involving empty boxes, whereby winning probabilities for a team depend on the number of attempts, as well as on the number of winners. We call this the…

In dynamic load balancing, we wish to distribute balls into bins in an environment where both balls and bins can be added and removed. We want to minimize the maximum load of any bin but we also want to minimize the number of balls and bins…

Let $S$ be a set of $n$ points in $\mathbb{R}^3$, no three collinear and not all coplanar. If at most $n-k$ are coplanar and $n$ is sufficiently large, the total number of planes determined is at least $1 + k…

We introduce a sorting machine consisting of $k+1$ stacks in series: the first $k$ stacks can only contain elements in decreasing order from top to bottom, while the last one has the opposite restriction. This device generalizes \cite{SM},…

Following an orginal idea by Kn\"odel, an online bin-packing problem is considered where the the large items arrive in double-packs. The dual problem where the small items arrive in double-packs is also considered. The enumerations have a…

A simple method to produce a random order type is to take the order type of a random point set. We conjecture that many probability distributions on order types defined in this way are heavily concentrated and therefore sample inefficiently…

We show an asymptotic 2/3-competitive strategy for the bin covering problem using O(b+log n) bits of advice, where b is the number of bits used to encode a rational value and n is the length of the input sequence.

We study the following synchronous process that we call "repeated balls-into-bins". The process is started by assigning $n$ balls to $n$ bins in an arbitrary way. In every subsequent round, from each non-empty bin one ball is chosen…

Let $\mathbb{Z}_n$ be the ring of residue classes modulo $n$, and let $\mathbb{Z}_n^{\ast}$ be the group of its units. 90 years ago, Brauer obtained a formula for the number of representations of $c\in \mathbb{Z}_n$ as the sum of $k$ units.…

We axiomatize the first-order theories of exponential integer parts of real-closed exponential fields in a language with $2^x$, in a language with a predicate for powers of 2, and in the basic language of ordered rings. In particular, the…

In the standard formulation of the occupancy problem one considers the distribution of r balls in n cells, with each ball assigned independently to a given cell with probability 1/n. Although closed form expressions can be given for the…

Although the representation of the real numbers in terms of a base and a set of digits has a long history, new questions arise even in simple situations. This paper concerns binary radix systems, i.e., positional number systems with digits…

Consider the coupon collector problem where each box of a brand of cereal contains a coupon and there are n different types of coupons. Suppose that the probability of a box containing a coupon of a specific type is $1/n$ and that we keep…

We describe a method for bounding the set of exceptional integers not represented by a given additive form in terms of the exceptional set corresponding to a subform. Illustrating our ideas with examples stemming from Waring's problem for…

For $n$ and $k$ integers we introduce the notion of some partition of $n$ being able to generate another partition of $n$. We solve the problem of finding the minimum size partition for which the set of partitions this partition can…

We present an $n\Delta^{O(k^2)}$ time algorithm to obtain an optimal solution for $1$-dimensional cutting stock problem: the bin packing problem of packing $n$ items onto unit capacity bins under the restriction that the number of item…

For enumerative problems, i.e. computable functions f from N to Z, we define the notion of an effective (or closed) formula. It is an algorithm computing f(n) in the number of steps that is polynomial in the combined size of the input n and…

Let a stick be broken at random at n-1 points to form n pieces. We consider three problems on forming k-gons with k out of these n pieces, and show how a statistical approach, through a linear transformation of variables, yields simple…

We consider decompositions of the real line into pairwise disjoint Borel pieces so that each piece is closed under addition. How many pieces can there be? We prove among others that the number of pieces is either at most 3 or uncountable,…

In this paper we consider multi-objective optimization problems over a box. The problem is very relevant and several computational approaches have been proposed in the literature. They broadly fall into two main classes: evolutionary…