Isoperimetric Sequences for Infinite Complete Binary Trees, Meta-Fibonacci Sequences and Signed Almost Binary Partitions

In this paper we demonstrate connections between three seemingly unrelated concepts. (1) The discrete isoperimetric problem in the infinite binary tree with all the leaves at the same level, ${\mathcal T}_{\infty}$: The $n$-th edge isoperimetric number $\delta(n)$ is defined to be $\min_{|S|=n, S \subset V({\mathcal T}_{\infty})} |(S,\bar{S})|$, where $(S,\bar{S})$ is the set of edges in the cut defined by $S$. (2) Signed almost binary partitions: This is the special case of the coin-changing problem where the coins are drawn from the set {\pm (2^d - 1): d is a positive integer}. The quantity of interest is $\tau(n)$, the minimum number of coins necessary to make change for $n$ cents. (3) Certain Meta-Fibonacci sequences: The Tanny sequence is defined by $T(n)=T(n{-}1{-}T(n{-}1))+T(n{-}2{-}T(n{-}2))$ and the Conolly sequence is defined by $C(n)=C(n{-}C(n{-}1))+C(n{-}1{-}C(n{-}2))$, where the initial conditions are $T(1) = C(1) = T(2) = C(2) = 1$. These are well-known "meta-Fibonacci" sequences. The main result that ties these three together is the following: $$\delta(n) = \tau(n) = n+ 2 + 2 \min_{1 \le k \le n} (C(k) - T(n-k) - k).$$ Apart from this, we prove several other results which bring out the interconnections between the above three concepts.