Related papers: Faulty picture-hanging improved
Decision-theoretic troubleshooting is one of the areas to which Bayesian networks can be applied. Given a probabilistic model of a malfunctioning man-made device, the task is to construct a repair strategy with minimal expected cost. The…
The statistical physics approach to the number partioning problem, a classical NP-hard problem, is both simple and rewarding. Very basic notions and methods from statistical mechanics are enough to obtain analytical results for the phase…
According to the honing theory of creativity, creative thought works not on individually considered, discrete, predefined representations but on a contextually-elicited amalgam of items which exist in a state of potentiality and may not be…
Jigsaw puzzle solving is an intriguing problem which has been explored in computer vision for decades. This paper focuses on a specific variant of the problem - solving puzzles with eroded boundaries. Such erosion makes the problem…
We consider the problem of assigning radii to a given set of points in the plane, such that the resulting set of circles is connected, and the sum of radii is minimized. We show that the problem is polynomially solvable if a connectivity…
We propose a novel abstraction of the image segmentation task in the form of a combinatorial optimization problem that we call the multi-separator problem. Feasible solutions indicate for every pixel whether it belongs to a segment or a…
The Sequential Multiple Knapsack Problem is a special case of Multiple knapsack problem in which the items sizes are divisible. A characterization of the optimal solutions of the problem and a description of the convex hull of all the…
Let $M$ be a 3-manifold. Every knotted (embedded) surface in $M \times \R$ can be moved via an ambient isotopy in such a way that its projection into $M$ is a generic surface. A surface is generic if every point on it is either a regular,…
The set splittability problem is the following: given a finite collection of finite sets, does there exits a single set that contains exactly half the elements from each set in the collection? (If a set has odd size, we allow the floor or…
Given a set $P$ of $n$ planar points, two axes and a real-valued score function $f()$ on subsets of $P$, the Optimal Planar Box problem consists in finding a box (i.e. axis-aligned rectangle) $H$ maximizing $f(H\cap P)$. We consider the…
Photo composition is an important factor affecting the aesthetics in photography. However, it is a highly challenging task to model the aesthetic properties of good compositions due to the lack of globally applicable rules to the wide…
We tackle the image reassembly problem with wide space between the fragments, in such a way that the patterns and colors continuity is mostly unusable. The spacing emulates the erosion of which the archaeological fragments suffer. We…
In the stable marriage and roommates problems, a set of agents is given, each of them having a strictly ordered preference list over some or all of the other agents. A matching is a set of disjoint pairs of mutually accepted agents. If any…
This paper introduces a new approach for the automated reconstruction - reassembly of fragmented objects having one surface near to plane, on the basis of the 3D representation of their constituent fragments. The whole process starts by 3D…
Let $G$ be a complete edge-weighted graph on $n$ vertices. To each subset of vertices of $G$ assign the cost of the minimum spanning tree of the subset as its weight. Suppose that $n$ is a multiple of some fixed positive integer $k$. The…
We study a family of sorting match puzzles on grids, which we call permutation match puzzles. In this puzzle, each row and column of a $n \times n$ grid is labeled with an ordering constraint -- ascending (A) or descending (D) -- and the…
The problem that we consider is the following: given an $n \times n$ array $A$ of positive numbers, find a tiling using at most $p$ rectangles (which means that each array element must be covered by some rectangle and no two rectangles must…
We consider a class of pattern matching problems where a normalising transformation is applied at every alignment. Normalised pattern matching plays a key role in fields as diverse as image processing and musical information processing…
This paper covers a variety of mathematical folk puzzles, including geometric (Tangrams, dissection puzzles), logic, algebraic, probability (Monty Hall Problem, Birthday Paradox), and combinatorial challenges (Eight Queens Puzzle, Tower of…
A random jigsaw puzzle is constructed by arranging $n^2$ square pieces into an $n \times n$ grid and assigning to each edge of a piece one of $q$ available colours uniformly at random, with the restriction that touching edges receive the…