相关论文: Inverting the 10-Coin Triangle Puzzle and Other Sh…

This article is a gentle introduction to the mathematical area known as circle packing, the study of the kinds of patterns that can be formed by configurations of non-overlapping circles. The first half of the article is an exposition of…

Given two combinatorial triangulations, how many edge flips are necessary and sufficient to convert one into the other? This question has occupied researchers for over 75 years. We provide a comprehensive survey, including full proofs, of…

We compute the sum and the alternating sum of the reciprocals of triangular numbers using two standard methods from calculus: a telescoping series approach and a power series approach. We then extend these results to generalized…

Triangular numbers that are multiple of other triangular numbers are investigated. It is known that for any positive non-square integer multiplier, there is an infinity of multiples of triangular numbers which are triangular numbers. If the…

We have computed a table of the triangle sides of all congruent numbers less than 10,000, which improves and extends the existing public table. We give some background on properties of the triangle sides, and explain how we computed our…

We prove that almost every triangle can be dissected only into $n^2$ triangles which have to be equal one another. Moreover, such a dissection is unique for every $n$. It turns out that to solve this "simple" problem it is convenient to use…

For three-body problem, R.Montgomery [3] proved a reconstruction formula which calculates the overall rotation relating two similar triangle configurations if the initial triangular configuration is similar to the configuration formed at…

This work deals with a classic problem: "Given a set of coins among which there is a counterfeit coin of a different weight, find this counterfeit coin using ordinary balance scales, with the minimum number of weighings possible, and…

We study a game in which one keeps flipping a coin until a given finite string of heads and tails occurs. We find the expected number of coin flips to end the game when the ending string consists of at most four maximal runs of heads or…

Scrambling the standard 3x3x3 Rubik's Cube corresponds to a random walk on a group containing approximately 43 quintillion elements. Viewing the random walk as a Markov chain, its mixing time determines the number of random moves required…

Over the last decade, Sudoku, a combinatorial number-placement puzzle, has become a favorite pastimes of many all around the world. In this puzzle, the task is to complete a partially filled $9 \times 9$ square with numbers 1 through 9,…

Permutation puzzles, such as the Rubik's Cube and the 15 puzzle, are enjoyed by the general public and mathematicians alike. Here we introduce quantum versions of permutation puzzles where the pieces of the puzzles are replaced with…

We consider the problem of upper bounding the number of circular transpositions needed to sort a permutation. It is well known that any permutation can be sorted using at most $n(n-1)/2$ adjacent transpositions. We show that, if we allow…

For every positive integer $n$ greater than $4$ there is a set of Latin squares of order $n$ such that every permutation of the numbers $1,\ldots,n$ appears exactly once as a row, a column, a reverse row or a reverse column of one of the…

Given a chain of $HW$ cubes where each cube is marked "turn $90^\circ$" or "go straight", when can it fold into a $1 \times H \times W$ rectangular box? We prove several variants of this (still) open problem NP-hard: (1) allowing some cubes…

Fix an integer n>=1. Suppose that a simple polygon is the union of n triangles whose vertices along the common boundary are arranged cyclically. How many sides can such a union -- to be called regular -- have at most? This gives OEIS…

A chain is an ordering of the integers 1 to n such that adjacent pairs have sums of a particular form, such as squares, cubes, triangular numbers, pentagonal numbers, or Fibonacci numbers. For example 4 1 2 3 5 form a Fibonacci chain while…

Rotation distance between rooted binary trees is the minimum number of simple rotations needed to transform one tree into the other. Computing the rotation distance between a pair of rooted trees can be quickly reduced in cases where there…

We give a formula for counting the triangles in a picture consisting of the three sides of a triangle and some cevians. This lets us prove statements that are claimed without proof in the Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences and some…

We show that the number of monotone triangles with prescribed bottom row (k_1,...,k_n) is given by a simple product formula which remarkably involves (shift) operators. Monotone triangles with bottom row (1,2,...,n) are in bijection with $n…