Related papers: Piercing the chessboard

Using a bijective proof, we show the number of ways to arrange a maximum number of nonattacking pawns on a $2m\times 2m$ chessboard is ${2m\choose m}^2$, and more generally, the number of ways to arrange a maximum number of nonattacking…

For $n\in\nats$ and $3\leq k\leq n$ we compute the exact value of $E_k(n)$, the maximum number of edges of a simple planar graph on $n$ vertices where each vertex bounds an $\ell$-gon where $\ell\geq k$. The lower bound of $E_k(n)$ is…

In 1979, Nishizeki and Baybars showed that every planar graph with minimum degree 3 has a matching of size $\frac{n}{3}+c$ (where the constant $c$ depends on the connectivity), and even better bounds hold for planar graphs with minimum…

We illustrate how to invite and excite students about research by exploring higher-dimensional generalizations of the classical egg drop problem, in which the goal is to locate a critical breaking point using the fewest number of trials.…

How many hyperplanes in $\mathbb{R}^n$ are needed in order to slice every edge of the $n$-dimensional hypercube with vertex set $\{\pm 1\}^n$? Here, we say that a hyperplane $H\subseteq \mathbb{R}^n$ slices an edge of the hypercube if it…

The Queen's Domination problem, studied for over 160 years, poses the following question: What is the least number of queens that can be arranged on a $m \times n$ chessboard so that they either attack or occupy every cell? We propose a…

We adapt linear programming methods from sphere packings to closed hyperbolic surfaces and obtain new upper bounds on their systole, their kissing number, the first positive eigenvalue of their Laplacian, the multiplicity of their first…

We prove an upper bound of $n+9$ for the strong separation number of the complete graph $K_n$, and an upper bound of $n+1$ for its weak separation number. This improves on the previous best known bound of $(1+o(1))n$ for both cases.

Let $P$ be a finite set of points in the plane in general position, that is, no three points of $P$ are on a common line. We say that a set $H$ of five points from $P$ is a $5$-hole in $P$ if $H$ is the vertex set of a convex $5$-gon…

Given an integer k, we consider the parallel k-stripping process applied to a hypergraph H: removing all vertices with degree less than k in each iteration until reaching the k-core of H. Take H as H_r(n,m): a random r-uniform hypergraph on…

Let $N$ be a positive integer. A sequence $X=(x_1,x_2,\ldots,x_N)$ of points in the unit interval $[0,1)$ is piercing if $\{x_1,x_2,\ldots,x_n\}\cap \left[\frac{i}{n},\frac{i+1}{n} \right) \neq\emptyset$ holds for every $n=1,2,\ldots, N$…

Let P be a set of n points in the plane, not all on a line. We show that if n is large then there are at least n/2 ordinary lines, that is to say lines passing through exactly two points of P. This confirms, for large n, a conjecture of…

To untangle a geometric graph means to move some of the vertices so that the resulting geometric graph has no crossings. Pach and Tardos [Discrete Comput. Geom., 2002] asked if every n-vertex geometric planar graph can be untangled while…

We prove that for any integers $p\geq k\geq 3$ and any $k$-tuple of positive integers $(n_1,\ldots ,n_k)$ such that $p=\sum _{i=1}^k{n_i}$ and $n_1\geq n_2\geq \ldots \geq n_k$, the condition $n_1\leq {p\over 2}$ is necessary and sufficient…

The study of nonplanar drawings of graphs with restricted crossing configurations is a well-established topic in graph drawing, often referred to as beyond-planar graph drawing. One of the most studied types of drawings in this area are the…

We present a proof of the Harbourne-Hirschowitz conjecture for linear systems with base points of multiplicity seven or less. This proof uses a well-known degeneration of the projective plane, as well as a combinatorial technique that…

A $d$-dimensional brick is a set $I_1\times \cdots \times I_d$ where each $I_i$ is an interval. Given a brick $B$, a brick partition of $B$ is a partition of $B$ into bricks. A brick partition $\mathcal{P}_d$ of a $d$-dimensional brick is…

Motivated by its relation to the length of cutting plane proofs for the Maximum Biclique problem, we consider the following communication game on a given graph G, known to both players. Let K be the maximal number of vertices in a complete…

A graph $G$ of order $n$ is called edge-pancyclic if, for every integer $k$ with $3 \leq k \leq n$, every edge of $G$ lies in a cycle of length $k$. Determining the minimum size $f(n)$ of a simple edge-pancyclic graph with $n$ vertices…

We consider the problem of computing the second elementary symmetric polynomial S^2_n(X) using depth-three arithmetic circuits of the form "sum of products of linear forms". We consider this problem over several fields and determine EXACTLY…