Related papers: Pushing Blocks by Sweeping Lines
We present and analyze PackIt!, a turn-based game consisting of packing rectangles on an $n \times n$ grid. PackIt! can be easily played on paper, either as a competitive two-player game or in \emph{solitaire} fashion. On the $t$-th turn, a…
In many problems in Computational Physics and Chemistry, one finds a special kind of sparse matrices, termed "banded matrices". These matrices, which are defined as having non-zero entries only within a given distance from the main…
In the recent paper [Duff I. et al, SIAM J. Sci. Comp., 37(3) (2015), A1248-A1269] the authors proposed an interesting procedure for the parallel solution of large, sparse consistent linear systems of equations. In this respect, according…
We consider the following load balancing process for $m$ tokens distributed arbitrarily among $n$ nodes connected by a complete graph: In each time step a pair of nodes is selected uniformly at random. Let $\ell_1$ and $\ell_2$ be their…
Given a graph $G$ and two independent sets $I_s$ and $I_t$ of size $k$, the independent set reconfiguration problem asks whether there exists a sequence of $k$-sized independent sets $I_s = I_0, I_1, I_2, \ldots, I_\ell = I_t$ such that…
We study the classic sliding cube model for programmable matter under parallel reconfiguration in three dimensions, providing novel algorithmic and surprising complexity results in addition to generalizing the best known bounds from two to…
Reversible computation is an unconventional form of computing that extends the standard forward-only mode of computation with the ability to execute a sequence of operations in reverse at any point during computation. As such, in this…
The problem of linear and circular permutations of n identical objects in m boxes, where a limit l is imposed on the number of objects in a box, is considered. In the linear case, where the boxes are arranged as a row, two methods of…
Boundary labeling is a technique in computational geometry used to label sets of features in an illustration. It involves placing labels along an axis-parallel bounding box and connecting each label with its corresponding feature using…
We prove that a variant of 2048, a popular online puzzle game, is PSPACE-Complete. Our hardness result holds for a version of the problem where the player has oracle access to the computer player's moves. Specifically, we show that for an…
We give both efficient algorithms and hardness results for reconfiguring between two connected configurations of modules in the hexagonal grid. The reconfiguration moves that we consider are "pivots", where a hexagonal module rotates around…
We prove PSPACE-completeness of the well-studied pushing-block puzzle Push-1F, a theoretical abstraction of many video games (introduced in 1999). The proof also extends to Push-$k$ for any $k \ge 2$. We also prove PSPACE-completeness of…
Nested Steiner quadruple systems are designs derived from Steiner quadruple systems (SQSs) by partitioning each block into pairs. A nested SQS is completely uniform if every possible pair appears with equal multiplicity, and completely…
We consider discrete, iterative load balancing via matchings on arbitrary graphs. Initially each node holds a certain number of tokens, defining the load of the node, and the objective is to redistribute the tokens such that eventually each…
Clustering is one of the fundamental tasks in data analytics and machine learning. In many situations, different clusterings of the same data set become relevant. For example, different algorithms for the same clustering task may return…
Given a configuration of pebbles on the vertices of a graph, a pebbling move is defined by removing two pebbles from some vertex and placing one pebble on an adjacent vertex. The cover pebbling number of a graph is the smallest number of…
Consider a finite number of balls initially placed in $L$ bins. At each time step a ball is taken from each non-empty bin. Then all the balls are uniformly reassigned into bins. This finite Markov chain is called Repeated Balls-into-Bins…
Even distribution of irregular workload to processing units is crucial for efficient parallelization in many applications. In this work, we are concerned with a spatial partitioning called rectilinear partitioning (also known as generalized…
We introduce discrete time Markov chains that preserve uniform measures on boxed plane partitions. Elementary Markov steps change the size of the box from (a x b x c) to ((a-1) x (b+1) x c) or ((a+1) x (b-1) x c). Algorithmic realization of…
We study equilibrium configurations of infinitely many identical particles on the real line or finitely many particles on the circle, such that the (repelling) force they exert on each other depends only on their distance. The main question…