Related papers: Foot-Sorting for Socks
A sock ordering is a sequence of socks with different colors. A sock ordering is foot-sortable if the sequence of socks can be sorted by a stack so that socks with the same color form a contiguous block. The problem of deciding whether a…
Defant and Kravitz considered the following problem: Suppose that, to the right of a foot, there is a line of colored socks that needs to be sorted. However, at any point in time, one can only either place the leftmost sock to the right of…
A sock sequence is a sequence of elements, which we will refer to as socks, from a finite alphabet. A sock sequence is sorted if all occurrences of a sock appear consecutively. We define equivalence classes of sock sequences called sock…
Suppose $n$ different pairs of socks are put in a tumble dryer. When the dryer is finished socks are taken out one by one, if a sock matches one of the socks on the sorting table both are removed, otherwise it is put on the table until its…
This paper addresses the anytime sorting problem, aiming to develop algorithms providing tentative estimates of the sorted list at each execution step. Comparisons are treated as steps, and the Spearman's footrule metric evaluates…
Let $M$ be an ordered matching of size $n$, that is, a partition of the set $[2n]$ into 2-element subsets. The sock number of $M$ is the maximum size of a sub-matching of $M$ in which all left-ends of the edges precede all the right-ends…
We explore the fundamental problem of sorting through the lens of learning-augmented algorithms, where algorithms can leverage possibly erroneous predictions to improve their efficiency. We consider two different settings: In the first…
In sorting situations where the final destination of each item is known, it is natural to repeatedly choose items and place them where they belong, allowing the intervening items to shift by one to make room. (In fact, a special case of…
Suppose one desires to randomly sample a pair of objects such as socks, hoping to get a matching pair. Even in the simplest situation for sampling, which is sampling with replacement, the innocent phrase "the distribution of the color of a…
Let a sock be an element of an ordered finite alphabet A and a sequence of these elements be a sock sequence. In 2023, Xia introduced a deterministic version of Defant and Kravitz's stack-sorting map by defining the $\phi_{\sigma}$ and…
We introduce a sorting machine consisting of $k+1$ stacks in series: the first $k$ stacks can only contain elements in decreasing order from top to bottom, while the last one has the opposite restriction. This device generalizes \cite{SM},…
A fork stack is a generalised stack which allows pushes and pops of several items at a time. We consider the problem of determining which input streams can be sorted using a single forkstack, or dually, which permutations of a fixed input…
Sorting is one of the most used and well investigated algorithmic problem [1]. Traditional postulation supposes the sorting data archived, and the elementary operation as comparisons of two numbers. In a view of appearance of new processors…
This short note deals with the so-called $ Sock \; Matching \; Problem$. We define $B_{n,k}$ as the number of all the finite sequences $a_1, \ldots, a_{2n}$ of nonnegative integers which contain at least one occurrence of $k$ $(1 \leq k…
Flip-sort is a natural sorting procedure which raises fascinating combinatorial questions. It finds its roots in the seminal work of Knuth on stack-based sorting algorithms and leads to many links with permutation patterns. We present…
A novel paradigm for sorting is introduced, based upon resetting. Using simple examples, we demonstrate that sorting is achieved by resetting the velocity component(s) or orientation of the particles, rather than position. The objects to be…
Given an undirected graph representing similarities between a set of items and an additive measure evaluating the items, we treat the position of a special subset of items in an ordinal ranking through a collection of combinatorial…
We introduce an algorithm to determine when a sorting operation, such as stack-sort or bubble-sort, outputs a given pattern. The algorithm provides a new proof of the description of West-2-stack-sortable permutations, that is permutations…
We study the space requirements of a sorting algorithm where only items that at the end will be adjacent are kept together. This is equivalent to the following combinatorial problem: Consider a string of fixed length n that starts as a…
Various forms of sorting problems have been studied over the years. Recently, two kinds of sorting puzzle apps are popularized. In these puzzles, we are given a set of bins filled with colored units, balls or water, and some empty bins.…