Related papers: The Kruskal Count
Consider an n by n array of cards shuffled in the following manner. An element x of the array is chosen uniformly at random; Then with probability 1/2 the rectangle of cards above and to the left of x is rotated 180 degrees, and with…
A thrackle is a graph drawing in which every pair of edges meets exactly once. The Thrackle Conjecture (established by John Conway) states that the number of edges of a thrackle cannot exceed the number of its vertices. Cairns, Koussas, and…
Several variations of hat guessing games have been popularly discussed in recreational mathematics. In a typical hat guessing game, after initially coordinating a strategy, each of $n$ players is assigned a hat from a given color set.…
A sequence of positive integers is introduced, that is proved to simultaneously solve an infinite family of related puzzles, one of which was recently featured on the popular YouTube sudoku channel \emph{Cracking the Cryptic}.
We give an estimate of the number of geometrically distinct open tours $\G$ for a knight on a chessboard. We use a randomization of Warnsdorff rule to implement importance sampling in a backtracking scheme, correcting the observed bias of…
For a given number of colors, $s$, the guessing number of a graph is the (base $s$) logarithm of the cardinality of the largest family of colorings of the vertex set of the graph such that the color of each vertex can be determined from the…
Probabilistic coupling is a powerful tool for analyzing pairs of probabilistic processes. Roughly, coupling two processes requires finding an appropriate witness process that models both processes in the same probability space. Couplings…
The Monty Hall puzzle has been solved and dissected in many ways, but always using probabilistic arguments, so it is considered a probability puzzle. In this paper the puzzle is set up as an orthodox statistical problem involving an unknown…
Cops and Robbers is a pursuit evasion game played on a graph, first introduced independently by Quilliot \cite{quilliot1978jeux} and Nowakowski and Winkler \cite{NOWAKOWSKI1983235} over four decades ago. A main interest in recent the…
In many branches of engineering, Banach contraction mapping theorem is employed to establish the convergence of certain deterministic algorithms. Randomized versions of these algorithms have been developed that have proved useful in…
"Egyptian Ratscrew" (ERS) is a modern American card game enjoyed by millions of players worldwide. A game of ERS is won by collecting all of the cards in the deck. Typically this game is won by the player with the fastest reflexes, since…
Suppose that two players take turns coloring the vertices of a given graph G with k colors. In each move the current player colors a vertex such that neighboring vertices get different colors. The first player wins this game if and only if…
We apply ideas from the cluster method to q-count the permutations of a multiset according to the number of occurrences of certain generalized patterns, as defined by Babson and Steingrimsson. In particular, we consider those patterns with…
We study the Gilbert-Shannon-Reeds model for riffle shuffles and ask 'How many times must a deck of cards be shuffled for the deck to be in close to random order?'. In 1992, Bayer and Diaconis gave a solution which gives exact and…
We present novel algorithmic techniques to efficiently verify the Kruskal rank of matrices that arise in sparse linear regression, tensor decomposition, and latent variable models. Our unified framework combines randomized hashing…
This paper explores a predictive game in which a Forecaster announces odds based on a time-homogeneous Markov kernel, establishing a game-theoretic law of large numbers for the relative frequencies of occurrences of all finite strings. A…
This paper presents and defends an argument that the continuum hypothesis is false, based on considerations about objective chance and an old theorem due to Banach and Kuratowski. More specifically, I argue that the probabilistic inductive…
The jigsaw percolation process on graphs was introduced by Brummitt, Chatterjee, Dey, and Sivakoff as a model of collaborative solutions of puzzles in social networks. Percolation in this process may be viewed as the joint connectedness of…
Various card tricks involve under-down dealing, where alternatively one card is placed under the deck and the next card is dealt. We study how the cards need to be prepared in the deck to be dealt in order. The order in which the $N$ cards…
In the tournament game two players, called Maker and Breaker, alternately take turns in claiming an unclaimed edge of the complete graph on n vertices and selecting one of the two possible orientations. Before the game starts, Breaker fixes…