Related papers: Code-based $[3,1]$-avoiders in finite affine space…

A $1$-avoiding set is a subset of $\mathbb{R}^n$ that does not contain pairs of points at distance $1$. Let $m_1(\mathbb{R}^n)$ denote the maximum fraction of $\mathbb{R}^n$ that can be covered by a measurable $1$-avoiding set. We prove two…

We study the smallest possible number of points in a topological space having k open sets. Equivalently, this is the smallest possible number of elements in a poset having k order ideals. Using efficient algorithms for constructing a…

Given a collection S of subsets of some set U, and M a subset of U, the set cover problem is to find the smallest subcollection C of S such that M is a subset of the union of the sets in C. While the general problem is NP-hard to solve,…

Let $\mathcal A=\{A_1,\ldots,A_n\}$ be a family of sets in the plane. For $0 \leq i < n$, denote by $f_i$ the number of subsets $\sigma$ of $\{1,\ldots,n\}$ of cardinality $i+1$ that satisfy $\bigcap_{i \in \sigma} A_i \neq \emptyset$. Let…

We prove that for any $K$ and $d$, there exist, for all sufficiently large admissible $v$, a pairwise balanced design PBD$(v,K)$ of dimension $d$ for which all $d$-point-generated flats are bounded by a constant independent of $v$. We also…

We construct subsets of Euclidean space of large Hausdorff dimension and full Minkowski dimension that do not contain nontrivial patterns described by the zero sets of functions. The results are of two types. Given a countable collection of…

Subspace codes are collections of subspaces of a projective space such that any two subspaces satisfy a pairwise minimum distance criterion. Recent results have shown that it is possible to construct optimal $(5,3)$ subspace codes from…

We prove that a typical compact set does not contain any similar copy of a given pattern. We also prove that a typical compact set of $[0,1]^{d} (d\geq 2)$ intersects any $(d-1)$-dimensional plane in at most $d$ points. We study the…

Consider a $q$-ary block code satisfying the property that no $l$-letters long codeword's prefix occurs as a suffix of any codeword for $l$ inside some interval. We determine a general upper bound on the maximum size of these codes and a…

A $k$-configuration is a collection of $k$ distinct integers $x_1,\ldots,x_k$ together with their pairwise arithmetic means $\frac{x_i+x_j}{2}$ for $1 \leq i < j \leq k$. Building on recent work of Filmus, Hatami, Hosseini and Kelman on…

The following class of problems arose out of vain attempts to show that the Pascal's triangle adic transformation has trivial spectrum. Partition a set of size $N$ into sets of size $S \equiv S(N)$ (ignoring leftovers). What is the…

Consider the Grassmann graph formed by $k$-dimensional subspaces of an $n$-dimensional vector space over the field of $q$ elements ($1<k<n-1$) and denote by $\Pi(n,k)_q$ the restriction of this graph to the set of projective $[n,k]_q$…

Let $\mathcal F\subset 2^{[n]}$ be a family in which any three sets have non-empty intersection and any two sets have at least $38$ elements in common. The nearly best possible bound $|\mathcal F|\le 2^{n-2}$ is proved. We believe that $38$…

Let $\mathcal{Q}_n$ be the $n$-dimensional hypercube: the graph with vertex set $\{0,1\}^n$ and edges between vertices that differ in exactly one coordinate. For $1\leq d\leq n$ and $F\subseteq \{0,1\}^d$ we say that $S\subseteq \{0,1\}^n$…

We isolate conditions on the relative size of sets of natural numbers $A,B$ that guarantee a nonempty intersection $\Delta(A)\cap\Delta(B)\ne\emptyset$ of the corresponding sets of distances. Such conditions apply to a large class of zero…

Let $t\ge 1$ be a given integer. Let ${\cal F}$ be a family of subsets of $[m]=\{1,2,\ldots,m\}$. Assume that for every pair of disjoint sets $S,T\subset [m]$ with $|S|=|T|=k$, there do not exist $2t$ sets in ${\cal F}$ where $t$ subsets of…

A $(k,m)$-Furstenberg set $S \subset \mathbb{F}_q^n$ over a finite field is a set that has at least $m$ points in common with a $k$-flat in every direction. The question of determining the smallest size of such sets is a natural…

We call a pair $(m,f)$ of integers, $m\geq 1$, $0\leq f \leq \binom{m}{2}$, \emph{absolutely avoidable} if there is $n_0$ such that for any pair of integers $(n,e)$ with $n>n_0$ and $0\leq e\leq \binom{n}{2}$ there is a graph on $n$…

Let $q$ be a prime power and $k$ be a natural number. What are the possible cardinalities of point sets ${S}$ in a projective plane of order $q$, which do not intersect any line at exactly $k$ points? This problem and its variants have been…

We investigate the minimum number of cliques of orders $3$, $4$, and $5$ needed to cover the edges of $K_{33}$ with zero excess. General covering results yield the lower bound 57. The main result of the paper is that no decomposition of…