Related papers: Inverting sets and the packing problem
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…
In the convex covering problem, we are given a convex polygon with holes $P$ and the goal is to cover $P$ using a small number of convex polygons that lie inside $P$. In this paper, we solve the problem using the following strategy. We find…
Let $V \subset \mathbb{R}$ be a finite set with $|V| = n $ and suppose we are given each pairwise distance independently with probability $p$. We show that if $p = (1+\epsilon)/n$, for some fixed $\epsilon >0$, then we can reconstruct a…
We investigate the problem of computing a minimal-volume container for the non-overlapping packing of a given set of three-dimensional convex objects. Already the simplest versions of the problem are NP-hard so that we cannot expect to find…
We call an operator algebra A {\em reversible} if A with reversed multiplication is also an abstract operator algebra (in the modern operator space sense). This class of operator algebras is intimately related to the {\em symmetric operator…
Let $\mathcal{Q}$ be a vertex subset problem on graphs. In a reconfiguration variant of $\mathcal{Q}$ we are given a graph $G$ and two feasible solutions $S_s, S_t\subseteq V(G)$ of $\mathcal{Q}$ with $|S_s|=|S_t|=k$. The problem is to…
A well studied special case of bin packing is the 3-partition problem, where n items of size > 1/4 have to be packed in a minimum number of bins of capacity one. The famous Karmarkar-Karp algorithm transforms a fractional solution of a…
Compression of integer sets and sequences has been extensively studied for settings where elements follow a uniform probability distribution. In addition, methods exist that exploit clustering of elements in order to achieve higher…
Let $P_n^{\text{sep}}$ denote the uniform probability measure on the set of separable permutations in $S_n$. Let $\mathbb{N}^*=\mathbb{N}\cup\{\infty\}$ with an appropriate metric and denote by $S(\mathbb{N},\mathbb{N}^*)$ the compact…
In the Permutation Constraint Satisfaction Problem (Permutation CSP) we are given a set of variables $V$ and a set of constraints C, in which constraints are tuples of elements of V. The goal is to find a total ordering of the variables,…
This paper considers the problem of clustering a collection of unlabeled data points assumed to lie near a union of lower-dimensional planes. As is common in computer vision or unsupervised learning applications, we do not know in advance…
We show that the following variant of labeling rotating maps is NP-hard, and present a polynomial approximation scheme for solving it. The input is a set of feature points on a map, to each of which a vertical bar of zero width is assigned.…
We consider two related problems arising from a question of R. Graham on quasirandom phenomena in permutation patterns. A ``pattern'' in a permutation $\sigma$ is the order type of the restriction of $\sigma : [n] \to [n]$ to a subset $S…
Vertex cover is one of the classical NP-complete problems in theoretical computer science. A vertex cover of a graph is a subset of vertices such that for each edge at least one of the two endpoints is contained in the subset. When studied…
From any poset isomorphic to the poset of gaps of a numerical semigroup $S$ with the order induced by $S$, one can recover $S$. As an application, we prove that two different numerical semigroups cannot have isomorphic posets (with respect…
Modern experimental methods enable the creation of self-assembly building blocks with tunable interactions, but optimally exploiting this tunability for the self-assembly of desired structures remains an important challenge. Many studies of…
We address several extremal problems concerning the spreading property of point sets of Steiner triple systems. This property is closely related to the structure of subsystems, as a set is spreading if and only if there is no proper…
The problem of storing permutations in a distributed manner arises in several common scenarios, such as efficient updates of a large, encrypted, or compressed data set. This problem may be addressed in either a combinatorial or a coding…
The Li--Wan sieve is extended to multisets when the underlying set is symmetric. The main ingredient of the proof is the Mobius inversion formula on the poset of partitions of $\{1,2,\dots,k\}$ ordered by refinement. As illustrative…
A permutation $\pi$ of a multiset is said to be a {\em quasi-Stirling } permutation if there does not exist four indices $i<j<k<\ell$ such that $\pi_i=\pi_k$ and $\pi_j=\pi_{\ell}$. Define $$ \overline{Q}_{\mathcal{M}}(t,u,v)=\sum_{\pi\in…