Related papers: A More Malicious Maitre d'
The probleme des menages (married couples problem) introduced by E.Lucas in 1891 is a classical problem that asks the number of ways to arrange n married couples around a circular table, so that husbands and wives are in alternate places…
The classical linear ordering problem seeks a single ranking representing a given preference matrix. While suitable for homogeneous populations, it fails when observed preferences arise from several latent groups with distinct ranking…
In this work, I collect and discuss a series of open questions in one-dimensional geometric optimization in Euclidean spaces. The focus is on two classes of problems: maximal distance minimizers and Steiner trees. Maximal distance…
An input to the Popular Matching problem, in the roommates setting, consists of a graph $G$ and each vertex ranks its neighbors in strict order, known as its preference. In the Popular Matching problem the objective is to test whether there…
As a continuation to our previous work [9, 10], we consider the domino tiling problem with impurities. (1) if we have more than two impurities on the boundary, we can compute the number of corresponding perfect matchings by using the…
We study a class of rearrangement problems under a novel pick-n-swap prehensile manipulation model, in which a robotic manipulator, capable of carrying an item and making item swaps, is tasked to sort items stored in lattices of variable…
We consider optimization problems involving the multiplication of variable matrices to be selected from a given family, which might be a discrete set, a continuous set or a combination of both. Such nonlinear, and possibly discrete,…
Peg solitaire is an old puzzle with a 300 year history. We consider two ways a computer can be utilized to find interesting peg solitaire puzzles. It is common for a peg solitaire puzzle to begin from a symmetric board position, we have…
The $n$-queens puzzle is to place $n$ mutually non-attacking queens on an $n \times n$ chessboard. We present a simple two stage randomized algorithm to construct such configurations. In the first stage, a random greedy algorithm constructs…
Japanese tatami mats are often arranged so that no four mats meet. This local restriction imposes a rich combinatorial structure when applied to monomino-domino coverings of rectilinear grids. We describe a modular, mechanical game board,…
Domineering is a combinatorial game played on a subset of a rectangular grid between two players. Each board position can be put into one of four outcome classes based on who the winner will be if both players play optimally. In this note,…
We revisit a version of the classic occupancy scheme, where balls are thrown until almost all boxes receive a given number of balls. Special cases are widely known as coupon-collectors and dixie cup problems. We show that as the number of…
This research explores the application of a genetic algorithm metaheuristic enriched by the wisdom of crowds in order to address the NP-Complete matrix domination problem (henceforth: TMDP) which is itself a constraint on related problems…
In this paper we introduce a new algorithm to study some NP-complete problems. This algorithm is a Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) inspired by the cavity method developed in the study of spin glass. We will focus on the maximum clique…
Gauss proposed the problem of how to enumerate the number of solutions for placing $N$ queens on an $N\times N$ chess board, so no two queens attack each other. The N-queen problem is a classic problem in combinatorics. We describe a…
In the Seat Arrangement problem the goal is to allocate agents to vertices in a graph such that the resulting arrangement is optimal or fair in some way. Examples include an arrangement that maximises utility or one where no agent envies…
We study the envy-free cake-cutting problem for $d+1$ players with $d$ cuts, for both the oracle function model and the polynomial time function model. For the former, we derive a $\theta(({1\over\epsilon})^{d-1})$ time matching bound for…
A rectangle blanket is a set of non-overlapping axis-aligned rectangles, used to approximately represent the two dimensional image of a shape approximately. The use of a rectangle blanket is a widely considered strategy for speeding-up the…
We consider the distributed version of the Multiple Knapsack Problem (MKP), where $m$ items are to be distributed amongst $n$ processors, each with a knapsack. We propose different distributed approximation algorithms with a tradeoff…
The often elusive Poincar\'e recurrence can be witnessed in a completely separable system. For such systems, the problem of recurrence reduces to the classic mathematical problem of simultaneous Diophantine approximation of multiple…