Related papers: A new upper bound to (a variant of) the pancake pr…

Pancake flipping, a famous open problem in computer science, can be formalised as the problem of sorting a permutation of positive integers using as few prefix reversals as possible. In that context, a prefix reversal of length k reverses…

In this paper we study several variations of the \emph{pancake flipping problem}, which is also well known as the problem of \emph{sorting by prefix reversals}. We consider the variations in the sorting process by adding with prefix…

The pancake problem is concerned with sorting a permutation (a stack of pancakes of different diameter) using only prefix reversals (spatula flips). Although the problem description belies simplicity, an exact formula for the maximum number…

Given a permutation pi, the application of prefix reversal f^(i) to pi reverses the order of the first i elements of pi. The problem of Sorting By Prefix Reversals (also known as pancake flipping), made famous by Gates and Papadimitriou…

Pancake Flipping is the problem of sorting a stack of pancakes of different sizes (that is, a permutation), when the only allowed operation is to insert a spatula anywhere in the stack and to flip the pancakes above it (that is, to perform…

Using existing classification results for the 7- and 8-cycles in the pancake graph, we determine the number of permutations that require 4 pancake flips (prefix reversals) to be sorted. A similar characterization of the 8-cycles in the…

In this work, we consider the burnt pancake problem, which is a well-studied problem going back to a work of Gates and Papadimitriou from 1979.The problem is to sort a stack of~$n$ one-sided burnt pancakes of different sizes, by a sequence…

We study the query complexity of finding a Tarski fixed point over the $k$-dimensional grid $\{1,\ldots,n\}^k$. Improving on the previous best upper bound of $\smash{O(\log^{\lceil 2k/3\rceil} n)}$ [FPS20], we give a new algorithm with…

We are given a stack of pancakes of different sizes and the only allowed operation is to take several pancakes from top and flip them. The unburnt version requires the pancakes to be sorted by their sizes at the end, while in the burnt…

Let $r(k)$ denote the maximum number of edges in a $k$-uniform intersecting family with covering number $k$. Erd\H{o}s and Lov\'asz proved that $ \lfloor k! (e-1) \rfloor \leq r(k) \leq k^k.$ Frankl, Ota, and Tokushige improved the lower…

A permutation $\sigma\in S_n$ is said to be $k$-universal or a $k$-superpattern if for every $\pi\in S_k$, there is a subsequence of $\sigma$ that is order-isomorphic to $\pi$. A simple counting argument shows that $\sigma$ can be a…

We introduce the "Median Inverse Problem" for metric spaces. In particular, having a permutation $\pi$ in the symmetric group $S_n$ (endowed with the breakpoint distance), we study the set of all $k$-subsets $\{x_1,...,x_k\}\subset S_n$ for…

We consider the problem of upper bounding the number of circular transpositions needed to sort a permutation. It is well known that any permutation can be sorted using at most $n(n-1)/2$ adjacent transpositions. We show that, if we allow…

A set $S$ of permutations is forcing if for any sequence $\{\Pi_i\}_{i \in \mathbb{N}}$ of permutations where the density $d(\pi,\Pi_i)$ converges to $\frac{1}{|\pi|!}$ for every permutation $\pi \in S$, it holds that $\{\Pi_i\}_{i \in…

New bounds on the number of similar or directly similar copies of a pattern within a finite subset of the line or the plane are proved. The number of equilateral triangles whose vertices all lie within an $n$-point subset of the plane is…

We study the formula complexity of the word problem $\mathsf{Word}_{S_n,k} : \{0,1\}^{kn^2} \to \{0,1\}$: given $n$-by-$n$ permutation matrices $M_1,\dots,M_k$, compute the $(1,1)$-entry of the matrix product $M_1\cdots M_k$. An important…

We prove new upper bounds on the multicolour Ramsey numbers of paths and even cycles. It is well known that $(k-1)n+o(n)\leq R_k(P_n)\leq R_k(C_n)\leq kn+o(n)$. The upper bound was recently improved by S\'ark\"ozy who showed that…

We use a method for determining the number of preimages of any permutation under the stack-sorting map in order to obtain recursive upper bounds for the numbers $W_t(n)$ and $W_t(n,k)$ of $t$-stack sortable permutations of length $n$ and…

It is shown that the first $n$ prime numbers $p_1,...,p_n$ determine the next one by the recursion equation $$ p_{n+1} =\lim\limits_{s\to +\infty} [\prod\limits^n_{k=1} (1-\frac{1}{p^s_k}) \sum\limits^\infty_{j=1} \frac{1}{j^s} -1]^{-1/s}.…

A permutation $\pi \in \mathbb{S}_n$ is $k$-balanced if every permutation of order $k$ occurs in $\pi$ equally often, through order-isomorphism. In this paper, we explicitly construct $k$-balanced permutations for $k \le 3$, and every $n$…