English

The change-making problem for six coin values and beyond

Combinatorics 2025-01-22 v2

Abstract

The change-making problem asks: given a positive integer vv and a collection CC of integer coin values c1=1<c2<c3<<cnc_1=1<c_2< c_3< \cdots< c_n, what is the minimum number of coins needed to represent vv with coin values from CC? For some coin systems CC, the greedy algorithm finds a representation with a minimum number of coins for all vv. We call such coin systems orderly. However, there are coin systems where the greedy algorithm fails to always produce a minimal representation. Over the past fifty years, progress has been made on the change-making problem, including finding a characterization of all orderly coin systems with 3, 4, and 5 coin values. We characterize orderly coin systems with 6 coin values, and we make generalizations to orderly coin systems with nn coin values.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2303.00078,
  title  = {The change-making problem for six coin values and beyond},
  author = {Cornelia A. Van Cott and Qiyu Zhang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2303.00078},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

25 pages. v2 incorporates referee suggestions, including a final section that discusses open problems

R2 v1 2026-06-28T08:52:31.241Z