Related papers: Where have all the grasshoppers gone?

A set of n segments in the plane may form a Euclidean TSP tour, a tree, or a matching, among others. Optimal TSP tours as well as minimum spanning trees and perfect matchings have no crossing segments, but several heuristics and…

A $(p, q)$-leaper is a fairy chess piece that, from a square $a$, can move to any of the squares $a + (\pm p, \pm q)$ or $a + (\pm q, \pm p)$. Let $L$ be a $(p, q)$-leaper with $p + q$ odd and $C$ a cycle of $L$ within a $(p + q) \times (p…

Erd\H{o}s asked what is the maximum number $\alpha(n)$ such that every set of $n$ points in the plane with no four on a line contains $\alpha(n)$ points in general position. We consider variants of this question for $d$-dimensional point…

Given a polygon $P$ in the plane that can be translated, rotated and enlarged arbitrarily inside a unit square, the goal is to find a set of lines such that at least one of them always hits $P$ and the number of lines is minimized. We prove…

From each point of a Poisson point process start growing a balloon at rate 1. When two balloons touch, they pop and disappear. Is every point contained in balloons infinitely often or not? We answer this for the Euclidean space, the…

A vertex subset $S$ of a graph $G$ is a general position set of $G$ if no vertex of $S$ lies on a geodesic between two other vertices of $S$. The cardinality of a largest general position set of $G$ is the general position number…

We propose a geometric structure induced by any given convex polygon $P$, called $Nest(P)$, which is an arrangement of $\Theta(n^2)$ line segments, each of which is parallel to an edge of $P$, where $n$ denotes the number of edges of $P$.…

Let $X$ be a vertex subset of a graph $G$. Then $u, v\in V(G)$ are $X$-positionable if $V(P)\cap X \subseteq \{u,v\}$ holds for any shortest $u,v$-path $P$. If each two vertices from $X$ are $X$-positionable, then $X$ is a general position…

We provide a spectrum of results for the Universal Guard Problem, in which one is to obtain a small set of points ("guards") that are "universal" in their ability to guard any of a set of possible polygonal domains in the plane. We give…

We study the $(k+1,k)$ diagonal map for $k=2,3,4,...$. We call this map $\Delta_k$. The map $\Delta_1$ is the pentagram map and $\Delta_k$ is a generalization. $\Delta_k$ does not preserve convexity, but we prove that $\Delta_k$ preserves a…

Suppose that we are given two independent sets $I_0$ and $I_r$ of a graph such that $|I_0| = |I_r|$, and imagine that a token is placed on each vertex in $I_0$. The token jumping problem is to determine whether there exists a sequence of…

Packing graphs is a combinatorial problem where several given graphs are being mapped into a common host graph such that every edge is used at most once. In the planar tree packing problem we are given two trees T1 and T2 on n vertices and…

Consider a string of N+1 damped oscillators moving on the line of which the motion of the first (called the "leader") is independent of the others. Each of the followers `observes' the relative velocity and position of only its nearest…

If $G$ is a graph, then $X\subseteq V(G)$ is a general position set if for every two vertices $v,u\in X$ and every shortest $(u,v)$-path $P$, it holds that no inner vertex of $P$ lies in $X$. In this note we propose three algorithms to…

We consider the following problem: Given a finite set of straight line segments in the plane, determine the positions of a minimal number of points on the segments, from which guards can see all segments. This problem can be interpreted as…

We consider the following problem arising from the study of human problem solving: Let $G$ be a vertex-weighted graph with marked "in" and "out" vertices. Suppose a random walker begins at the in-vertex, steps to neighbors of vertices with…

Let $P$ be a set of $n$ points in general position on the plane. A set of closed convex polygons with vertices in $P$, and with pairwise disjoint interiors is called a convex decomposition of $P$ if their union is the convex hull of $P$,…

Consider $n+m$ nonintersecting Brownian bridges, with $n$ of them leaving from 0 at time $t=-1$ and returning to 0 at time $t=1$, while the $m$ remaining ones (wanderers) go from $m$ points $a_i$ to $m$ points $b_i$. First, we keep $m$…

Given a bipartite graph $G=(V_b,V_r,E)$, the $2$-Level Quasi-Planarity problem asks for the existence of a drawing of $G$ in the plane such that the vertices in $V_b$ and in $V_r$ lie along two parallel lines $\ell_b$ and $\ell_r$,…

The famous pancake theorem states that for every finite set $X$ in the plane, there exist two orthogonal lines that divide $X$ into four equal parts. We propose an algorithm whose running time is linear in the number of points in $X$ and…