Related papers: The Kruskal Count
A magic SET square is a 3 by 3 table of SET cards such that each row, column, diagonal, and anti-diagonal is a set. We allow the following transformations of the square: shuffling features, shuffling values within the features, rotations…
This paper is about the following question: How many riffle shuffles mix a deck of card for games such as blackjack and bridge? An object that comes up in answering this question is the descent polynomial associated with pairs of decks,…
In this methodological article on experimental-yet-rigorous enumerative combinatorics, we use two instructive case studies, to show that often, just like Alexander the Great before us, the simple, "cheating" solution to a hard problem is…
The secretary problem or the game of Googol are classic models for online selection problems that have received significant attention in the last five decades. We consider a variant of the problem and explore its connections to data-driven…
Determining the crossing numbers of Cartesian products of small graphs with arbitrarily large paths has been an ongoing topic of research since the 1970s. Doing so requires the establishment of coincident upper and lower bounds; the former…
Stochastic Kronecker graphs supply a parsimonious model for large sparse real world graphs. They can specify the distribution of a large random graph using only three or four parameters. Those parameters have however proved difficult to…
We take a close look at a classical magic trick performed with a string, where a trivial knot is seemingly isotoped into a trefoil, and generalize it to a family of magic tricks for transforming the unknot into other knots. We encode such a…
A random number generator is proposed based on a theorem about existence of chaos in fixed point iteration of x= cot2(x). Digital computer simulation of this function iteration exhibits random behavior. A method is proposed to extract…
We study a game where one player selects a random function, and the other has to guess that function, and show that with high probability the second player can correctly guess most of the random function. We apply this analysis to…
"Guess Who?" is a popular two player game where players ask "Yes"/"No" questions to search for their opponent's secret identity from a pool of possible candidates. This is modeled as a simple stochastic game. Using this model, the optimal…
A deck of $n$ cards are shuffled by repeatedly taking off the top card, flipping it with probability $1/2$, and inserting it back into the deck at a random position. This process can be considered as a Markov chain on the group $B_n$ of…
Consider a game of permutation wordle in which a player attempts to guess a secret permutation of length $n$ in as few guesses as possible. In each round, the guessing player is told which indices of their guessed permutation are correct.…
We provide an algorithm to find the value and an optimal strategy of the solitaire variant of the Ten Thousand dice game in the framework of Markov Control Processes. Once an optimal critical threshold is found, the set of non-stopping…
In graph theory, knowing the number of complete subgraphs with r vertices that a graph g has, limits the number of its complete subgraphs with s vertices, for s > r. A useful upper bound is provided by the Kruskal-Katona theorem, but this…
The game of Knockout is a classic playground game played with two basketballs. This paper uses a Markov process to analyze each player's probability of winning the game given their starting position in line and shooting percentages,…
In this paper we study a variant of the Malicious Ma\^{i}tre d' problem. This problem, attributed to computer scientist Rob Pike in Peter Winkler's book "Mathematical Puzzles: A Connoisseur's Collection", involves seating diners around a…
A puzzle about prisoners trying to identify the color of a hat on their head leads to a version where there are k more hats than prisoners. This generalized puzzle is related to the independence number of the arrangement graph A(m, n) and…
The crossword-like patterns of tiles in Scrabble form connected graphs of occupied sites on a square lattice. We find the most structureless description that reproduces means and covariances observed in real Scrabble games by adapting a…
The locker puzzle is a game played by multiple players against a referee. It has been previously shown that the best strategy that exists cannot succeed with probability greater than 1-ln2 \approx 0.31, no matter how many players are…
Consider a permutation $\sigma\in S_n$ as a deck of cards numbered from 1 to $n$ and laid out in a row, where $\sigma_j$ denotes the number of the card that is in the $j$-th position from the left.\rm\ We define two cyclic to random…