Related papers: The $n$-queens problem
In this article we propose a probabilistic framework in order to study the fair division of a divisible good, e.g., a cake, between n players. Our framework follows the same idea than the ''Full independence model'' used in the study of…
A 2-coloring of the n-cube in the n-dimensional Euclidean space can be considered as an assignment of weights of 1 or 0 to the vertices. Such a colored n-cube is said to be balanced if its center of mass coincides with its geometric center.…
In 1996, my brilliant student John Noonan, discovered, and proved that there are 3(2n)!/(n(n+3)!(n-3)!) ways to line-up n people of different heights in such a way that out of the n(n-1)(n-2)/6 possible triples of people exactly one is such…
In this paper we study Tur\'an and Ramsey numbers in linear triple systems, defined as $3$-uniform hypergraphs in which any two triples intersect in at most one vertex. A famous result of Ruzsa and Szemer\'edi is that for any fixed $c>0$…
The 15 puzzle is a classic reconfiguration puzzle with fifteen uniquely labeled unit squares within a $4 \times 4$ board in which the goal is to slide the squares (without ever overlapping) into a target configuration. By generalizing the…
In the eternal domination game, an attacker attacks a vertex at each turn and a team of guards must move a guard to the attacked vertex to defend it. The guards may only move to adjacent vertices and no more than one guard may occupy a…
We introduce two new metrics of "simplicity" for knight's tours: the number of turns and the number of crossings. We give a novel algorithm that produces tours with $9.25n+O(1)$ turns and $12n+O(1)$ crossings on an $n\times n$ board, and we…
A king invites n couples to sit around a round table with 2n+1 seats. For each couple, the king decides a prescribed distance d between 1 and n which the two spouses have to be seated from each other (distance d means that they are…
Given a polynomial $Q(x_1,\cdots, x_t)=\lambda_1 x_1^{k_1}+\cdots +\lambda_t x_t^{k_t}$, for every $c\in \mathbb{Z}$ and $n\geq 2$, we study the number of solutions $N_J(Q;c,n)$ of the congruence equation $Q(x_1,\cdots, x_t)\equiv…
For the power-law potential $n$-body problem, we study a special kind of central configurations where all the masses lie on a circle and the center of mass coincides with the center of the circle. It is also called the centered co-circular…
Consider a random permutation of $\{1, \ldots, \lfloor n^{t_2}\rfloor\}$ drawn according to the Ewens measure with parameter $t_1$ and let $K(n, t)$ denote the number of its cycles, where $t\equiv (t_1, t_2)\in\mathbb [0, 1]^2$. Next,…
We consider the chessboard pebbling problem analyzed by Chung, Graham, Morrison and Odlyzko [3]. We study the number of reachable configurations $G(k)$ and a related double sequence $G(k,m)$. Exact expressions for these are derived, and we…
Closed form expressions for the domination number of an $n \times m$ grid have attracted significant attention, and an exact expression has been obtained in 2011 by Gon\c{c}alves et al. In this paper, we present our results on obtaining new…
We consider the problem where P is an unknown permutation on {0,1,...,2^n - 1}, y is an element of {0,1,...,2^n - 1}, and the goal is to determine the minimum r > 0 such that P^r(y) = y (where P^r is P composed with itself r times).…
This paper is concerned with the problem of finding $n$ distinct squares such that, on excluding any one of them, the sum of the remaining $n-1$ squares is a square. While parametric solutions are known when $n=3$ and $n=4$, when $n > 4$,…
We study $\mathrm{exa}_k(n,F)$, the largest number of edges in an $n$-vertex graph $G$ that contains exactly $k$ copies of a given subgraph $F$. The case $k=0$ is the Tur\'an number $\mathrm{ex}(n,F)$ that is among the most studied…
Answering a pair of questions of Conrey, Gabbard, Grant, Liu, and Morrison, we prove that a triplet of dice drawn from the multiset model are intransitive with probability $1/4+o(1)$ and the probability a random pair of dice tie tends…
As a variant of the famous Tur\'an problem, we study $\mathrm{rex}(n,F)$, the maximum number of edges that an $n$-vertex regular graph can have without containing a copy of $F$. We determine $\mathrm{rex}(n,K_{r+1})$ for all pairs of…
We consider a generalization of Eulerian numbers which count the number of placements of $cn$ "rooks" on an $n\times n$ board where there are exactly $c$ rooks in each row and each column, and exactly $k$ rooks below the main diagonal. The…
The Tur\'{a}n inequalities and the higher order Tur\'{a}n inequalities arise in the study of Maclaurin coefficients of an entire function in the Laguerre-P\'{o}lya class. A real sequence $\{a_{n}\}$ is said to satisfy the Tur\'{a}n…