Related papers: Conway's napkin problem
In the MINIMUM CONVEX COVER (MCC) problem, we are given a simple polygon $\mathcal P$ and an integer $k$, and the question is if there exist $k$ convex polygons whose union is $\mathcal P$. It is known that MCC is $\mathsf{NP}$-hard…
The theory of equidistribution is about hundred years old, and has been developed primarily by number theorists and theoretical computer scientists. A motivated uninitiated peer could encounter difficulties perusing the literature, due to…
Accessibility percolation is a new type of percolation problem inspired by evolutionary biology. To each vertex of a graph a random number is assigned and a path through the graph is called accessible if all numbers along the path are in…
The problem `Exploring Mount Neverest' by Henry Ernest Dudeney is solved. Dudeney formulated the problem in the beginning of the 20th century and gave a non-optimal solution (without estimating the non-optimality).
In 1942 Haskell B.Curry presented what is now called Curry paradox which can be found in a logic independently of its stand on negation.In recent years there has been a revitalised interest in non-classical solutions to the semantic…
The stable marriage problem has a wide variety of practical applications, ranging from matching resident doctors to hospitals, to matching students to schools, or more generally to any two-sided market. We consider a useful variation of the…
Conjunctive query (CQ) evaluation is NP-complete, but becomes tractable for fragments of bounded hypertreewidth. Approximating a hard CQ by a query from such a fragment can thus allow for an efficient approximate evaluation. While…
The classical cake cutting problem studies how to find fair allocations of a heterogeneous and divisible resource among multiple agents. Two of the most commonly studied fairness concepts in cake cutting are proportionality and…
The Stable Marriage Problem, as proposed by Gale and Shapley, considers producing a bipartite matching between two equally sized sets of boys (proposers) and respectively girls (acceptors), each member having a total preference order over…
In this paper, we introduce a family of sequential decision-making problems, collectively termed the Keychain Problem, that involve exploring a set of actions to maximize expected payoff when only a subset of actions are available in each…
Maybe the first inverse problem presented in the history of the occidental thought is described in the book Republic, written by Plato. The problem is posed in the Book VII in a text known as the Allegory of the Cave. That text motivated us…
An input to the Popular Matching problem, in the roommates setting, consists of a graph $G$ and each vertex ranks its neighbors in strict order, known as its preference. In the Popular Matching problem the objective is to test whether there…
This is a work in two parts devoted to solutions of the so-called {\em four Landau's problems} in Number Theory, listed by Edmund Landau at the 1912 International Congress of Mathematics. In Part I the {\em Goldbach's conjecture} is proved.…
We consider a natural model of random knotting- choose a knot diagram at random from the finite set of diagrams with n crossings. We tabulate diagrams with 10 and fewer crossings and classify the diagrams by knot type, allowing us to…
In 1907, Henry Ernest Dudeney posed a puzzle: ``cut any equilateral triangle \dots\ into as few pieces as possible that will fit together and form a perfect square'' (without overlap, via translation and rotation). Four weeks later, Dudeney…
A monopolist wishes to maximize her profits by finding an optimal price policy. After she announces a menu of products and prices, each agent $x$ will choose to buy that product $y(x)$ which maximizes his own utility, if positive. The…
Apportionment is the problem of distributing $h$ indivisible seats across states in proportion to the states' populations. In the context of the US House of Representatives, this problem has a rich history and is a prime example of…
We propose models for lobbying in a probabilistic environment, in which an actor (called "The Lobby") seeks to influence voters' preferences of voting for or against multiple issues when the voters' preferences are represented in terms of…
We found a solution of the star puzzle (a path on a chessboard from c5 to d4 in 14 straight strokes) in 14 queen moves, which has been claimed by the author as impossible.
J. J. Sylvester's four-point problem asks for the probability that four points chosen uniformly at random in the plane have a triangle as their convex hull. Using a combinatorial classification of points in the plane due to Goodman and…