Related papers: The mixing time of the Thorp shuffle
This paper studies biased riffle shuffles, first defined by Diaconis, Fill, and Pitman. These shuffles generalize the well-studied Gilbert-Shannon-Reeds shuffle and convolve nicely. An upper bound is given for the time for these shuffles to…
We study an overdamped Langevin equation on the $d$-dimensional torus with stationary distribution proportional to~$p = e^{-U / \kappa}$. When~$U$ has multiple wells the mixing time of the associated process is exponentially large (of…
In this paper, we introduce certain new features of the shuffle algebra, that will allow us to obtain explicit formulas for the isomorphism between its Drinfeld double and the elliptic Hall algebra.
An abstract polytope of rank n is said to be chiral if its automorphism group has two orbits on the flags, such that adjacent flags belong to distinct orbits. Examples of chiral polytopes have been difficult to find. A "mixing" construction…
Consider the following puzzle: a farmland consists of several fields, each occupied by either a farmer, a fox, a chicken, or a caterpillar. Creatures in neighboring fields can swap positions as long as the fox avoids the farmer, the chicken…
Collapsi is a two-player game of complete information released in June 2025 by Mark S. Ball of Riffle Shuffle & Roll. Played with two pawns on a toroidal board of 16 randomly mixed playing cards, players take it in turns to move based on…
Consider the following game between a random player R and a deterministic player D. There is a pile of n elements at the beginning. The rules for playing are as follows: In each turn of R, if the pile contains exactly m elements, R removes…
The switch chain is a well-known Markov chain for sampling directed graphs with a given degree sequence. While not ergodic in general, we show that it is ergodic for regular degree sequences. We then prove that the switch chain is rapidly…
We introduce a new method for discovering matrix multiplication schemes based on random walks in a certain graph, which we call the flip graph. Using this method, we were able to reduce the number of multiplications for the matrix formats…
Flip graphs were recently introduced in order to discover new matrix multiplication methods for matrix sizes. The technique applies to other tensors as well. In this paper, we explore how it performs for polynomial multiplication.
The Burau representation of the braid group can be used to recover the Alexander polynomial of the closure of a braid. We define twisted Burau maps and use them to compute twisted Alexander polynomials.
Given a finite graph G, a vertex of the lamplighter graph consists of a zero-one labeling of the vertices of G, and a marked vertex of G. For transitive graphs G, we show that, up to constants, the relaxation time for simple random walk in…
Dynamical billiards consist of a particle on a two-dimensional table, bouncing elastically off a boundary curve. The state of the system is given by two numbers: one describing the location along the curve where the bounce occurs, and…
Let $\{G_n\}_1^{\infty}$ be a sequence of non-trivial finite groups. In this paper, we study the properties of a random walk on the complete monomial group $G_n\wr S_n$ generated by the elements of the form…
The goal of this article is to give an elementary proof of the double shuffle relations directly for the Goncharov and Manin motivic multiple zeta values. The shuffle relation is straightforward, but for the stuffle we use a modification of…
We propose a new kind of sliding-block puzzle, called Gourds, where the objective is to rearrange 1 x 2 pieces on a hexagonal grid board of 2n + 1 cells with n pieces, using sliding, turning and pivoting moves. This puzzle has a single…
We study the mixing time of the Rook's Walk Markov chain on a $d$-dimensional chess board of side length $n\geq 3$, where a rook moves by first selecting an axis uniformly at random and then selecting a new position along that axis…
The game of Spot it(R) is based on an order 7 finite projective plane. This article presents a solitaire challenge: extract an order 7 affine plane and arrange those 49 cards into a square such that the symmetries of the affine and…
We show how to simulate a roll of a fair $n$-sided die by one flip of a biased coin with probability $1/n$ of coming up heads, followed by $3\lfloor\log_2 n \rfloor+1$ flips of a fair coin.
This thesis introduces a way to build Markov chains out of Hopf algebras. The transition matrix of a "Hopf-power Markov chain" is (the transpose of) the matrix of the coproduct-then-product operator on a combinatorial Hopf algebra with…