Related papers: Sorting with a forklift
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…
Pattern avoiding machines were recently introduced by Claesson, Ferrari and the current author to gain a better understanding of the classical $2$-stacksort problem. In this paper we generalize these devices by allowing permutations with…
Items from a database are often ranked based on a combination of multiple criteria. A user may have the flexibility to accept combinations that weigh these criteria differently, within limits. On the other hand, this choice of weights can…
In optimization or machine learning problems we are given a set of items, usually points in some metric space, and the goal is to minimize or maximize an objective function over some space of candidate solutions. For example, in clustering…
We review the basic definition of a stack and apply it to the topological and smooth settings. We then address two subtleties of the theory: the correct definition of a ``stack over a stack'' and the distinction between small stacks (which…
The problem of ranking can be described as follows. We have a set of combinatorial objects $S$, such as, say, the k-subsets of n things, and we can imagine that they have been arranged in some list, say lexicographically, and we want to…
The sorting operation is one of the most commonly used building blocks in computer programming. In machine learning, it is often used for robust statistics. However, seen as a function, it is piecewise linear and as a result includes many…
In a capacitated directed graph, it is known that the set of all min-cuts forms a distributive lattice [1], [2]. Here, we describe this lattice as a regular predicate whose forbidden elements can be advanced in constant parallel time after…
Shortlisting is the process of selecting a subset of alternatives from a larger pool for further consideration or final decision-making. It is widely applied in social choice and multi-agent system scenarios. The growing demand for…
Pop-stacks are variants of stacks that were introduced by Avis and Newborn in 1981. Coincidentally, a 1982 result of Unger implies that every permutation of length n can be sorted by n-1 passes through a deterministic pop-stack. We give a…
We study the problem of determining whether a given frame is scalable, and when it is, understanding the set of all possible scalings. We show that for most frames this is a relatively simple task in that the frame is either not scalable or…
A growing class of applications depends on fair ordering, where events that occur earlier should be processed before later ones. Providing such guarantees is difficult in practice because clock synchronization is inherently imperfect:…
We consider the offline sorting buffer problem. The input is a sequence of items of different types. All items must be processed one by one by a server. The server is equipped with a random-access buffer of limited capacity which can be…
We examine the problem of searching sequentially for a desired real value (a key) within a sorted unbalanced three-dimensional finite real array. This classic problem can be viewed as determining the correct dimensional threshold function…
Ranking is a central task in machine learning and information retrieval. In this task, it is especially important to present the user with a slate of items that is appealing as a whole. This in turn requires taking into account interactions…
In fair division of indivisible goods, using sequences of sincere choices (or picking sequences) is a natural way to allocate the objects. The idea is as follows: at each stage, a designated agent picks one object among those that remain.…
Selecting a subset of the $k$ "best" items from a dataset of $n$ items, based on a scoring function, is a key task in decision-making. Given the rise of automated decision-making software, it is important that the outcome of this process,…
We introduce operators $\mathsf{hare}$ and $\mathsf{tortoise}$, which act on words as natural generalizations of West's stack-sorting map. We show that the heuristically slower algorithm $\mathsf{tortoise}$ can sort words arbitrarily faster…
Lexicographical sorting is a fundamental problem with applications to contingency tables, databases, Bayesian networks, and more. A standard method to lexicographically sort general data is to iteratively use a stable sort -- a sort which…
The unrestricted block relocation problem is an important optimization problem encountered at terminals, where containers are stored in stacks. It consists in determining the minimum number of container moves so as to empty the considered…