Related papers: Lower Bounds for Sorting 16, 17, and 18 Elements
Ranking over sets arise when users choose between groups of items. For example, a group may be of those movies deemed $5$ stars to them, or a customized tour package. It turns out, to model this data type properly, we need to investigate…
Covering arrays for words of length $t$ over a $d$ letter alphabet are $k \times n$ arrays with entries from the alphabet so that for each choice of $t$ columns, each of the $d^t$ $t$-letter words appears at least once among the rows of the…
We study classes of set partitions determined by the avoidance of multiple patterns, applying a natural notion of partition containment that has been introduced by Sagan. We say that two sets S and T of patterns are equivalent if for each…
Given a set C of binary n-tuples and c in C, how many bits of c suffice to distinguish it from the other elements in C? We shed new light on this old combinatorial problem and improve on previously known bounds.
We show that the minimal number of colors for all effective $n$-colorings of a link with non-zero determinant is at least $1+\log_2 n$.
Grinblat (2002) asks the following question in the context of algebras of sets: What is the smallest number $\mathfrak v = \mathfrak v(n)$ such that, if $A_1, \ldots, A_n$ are $n$ equivalence relations on a common finite ground set $X$,…
To keep card sorting with a lot of cards concise, a common strategy for gauging mental models involves presenting participants with fewer randomly selected cards instead of the full set. This is a decades-old practice, but its effects…
We study the problem of sorting under incomplete information, when queries are used to resolve uncertainties. Each of $n$ data items has an unknown value, which is known to lie in a given interval. We can pay a query cost to learn the…
A set of proper subgroups is a covering for a group if its union is the whole group. The minimal number of subgroups needed to cover $G$ is called the covering number of $G$, denoted by $\sigma(G)$. Determining $\sigma(G)$ is an open…
A permutation $\pi$ over alphabet $\Sigma = {1,2,3,\ldots,n}$, is a sequence where every element $x$ in $\Sigma$ occurs exactly once. $S_n$ is the symmetric group consisting of all permutations of length $n$ defined over $\Sigma$. $I_n$ =…
The problem of determining which permutations can be sorted using certain switchyard networks dates back to Knuth in 1968. In this work, we are interested in permutations which are sortable on a double-ended queue (called a deque), or on…
The set equality problem is to decide whether two sets $A$ and $B$ are equal or disjoint, under the promise that one of these is the case. Some other problems, like the Graph Isomorphism problem, is solvable by reduction to the set quality…
We study a family of equivalence relations on $S_n$, the group of permutations on $n$ letters, created in a manner similar to that of the Knuth relation and the forgotten relation. For our purposes, two permutations are in the same…
Sorting extremely large datasets is a frequently occuring task in practice. These datasets are usually much larger than the computer's main memory; thus external memory sorting algorithms, first introduced by Aggarwal and Vitter (1988), are…
We introduce a new model to study algorithm design under unreliable information, and apply this model for the problem of finding the uncorrupted maximum element of a list containing $n$ elements, among which are $k$ corrupted elements.…
The distinguishing number of a graph $G$, denoted $D(G)$, is the minimum number of colors needed to produce a coloring of the vertices of $G$ so that every nontrivial isomorphism interchanges vertices of different colors. A list assignment…
Previous work identifying depth-optimal $n$-channel sorting networks for $9\leq n \leq 16$ is based on exploiting symmetries of the first two layers. However, the naive generate-and-test approach typically applied does not scale. This paper…
Given a set $P$ of $n$ points in the plane, its separability is the minimum number of lines needed to separate all its pairs of points from each other. We show that the minimum number of lines needed to separate $n$ points, picked randomly…
We find large lower bounds for a certain family of algorithms, and prove that such bounds are limited only by natural computability arguments.
Defant and Zheng introduced a consecutive-pattern-avoiding stack sort map $SC_{\sigma}$, where the stack must avoid a consecutive pattern $\sigma$. Seidel and Sun disproved a conjecture in Defant and Zheng's paper about the maximum…