相关论文: Frustration solitaire

Modern board games are a rich source of interesting and new challenges for combinatorial problems. The game Nmbr9 is a solitaire style puzzle game using polyominoes. The rules of the game are simple to explain, but modelling the game…

We propose a new approach for solving combinatorial optimization problem by utilizing the mechanism of chases and escapes, which has a long history in mathematics. In addition to the well-used steepest descent and neighboring search, we…

Parrondo's paradox is about a paradoxical game and gambling where two probabilistic losing games can be combined to form a winning game. While the counter intuitive game is interesting in itself, it can be thought of a discrete version of…

Mathematics has been used in the exploration and enumeration of juggling patterns. In the case when we catch and throw one ball at a time the number of possible juggling patterns is well-known. When we are allowed to catch and throw any…

We study several consequences of the packing problem, a conjecture from combinatorial optimization, using algebraic invariants of square-free monomial ideals. While the packing problem is currently unresolved, we successfully settle the…

A popular approach in combinatorial optimization is to model problems as integer linear programs. Ideally, the relaxed linear program would have only integer solutions, which happens for instance when the constraint matrix is totally…

Many natural combinatorial problems can be expressed as constraint satisfaction problems. This class of problems is known to be NP-complete in general, but certain restrictions on the form of the constraints can ensure tractability. The…

In this article, we give a polynomial algorithm to decide whether a given permutation $\sigma$ is sortable with two stacks in series. This is indeed a longstanding open problem which was first introduced by Knuth. He introduced the stack…

Low rank matrix and tensor completion problems are to recover the incomplete two and higher order data by using their low rank structures. The essential problem in the matrix and tensor completion problems is how to improve the efficiency.…

The 3-domatic number problem asks whether a given graph can be partitioned intothree dominating sets. We prove that this problem can be solved by a deterministic algorithm in time 2.695^n (up to polynomial factors). This result improves the…

The problem of approximate joint diagonalization of a collection of matrices arises in a number of diverse engineering and signal processing problems. This problem is usually cast as an optimization problem, and it is the main goal of this…

In this paper, we show that the low rank matrix completion problem can be reduced to the problem of finding the rank of a certain tensor.

An assignment problem is the optimization problem of finding, in an m by n matrix of nonnegative real numbers, k entries, no two in the same row or column, such that their sum is minimal. Such an optimization problem is called a random…

This paper deals with a generalized Sudoku problem and investigates the unicity of a given solution. We introduce constraint sets, which is a generalization of the rows, columns and blocks of a classical Sudoku puzzle. The unicity property…

When shuffling a deck of cards, one probably wants to make sure it is thoroughly shuffled. A way to do this is by sifting through the cards to ensure that no adjacent cards are the same number, because surely this is a poorly shuffled deck.…

Many combinatorial problems can be formulated as "Can I transform configuration 1 into configuration 2, if certain transformations only are allowed?". An example of such a question is: given two k-colourings of a graph, can I transform the…

In a well-shuffled deck of cards, what is the probability that somewhere in the deck there are adjacent cards of the same rank? What is the average number of adjacent matches? What is the probability distribution for the number of matches?…

We consider a problem of shuffling a deck of cards with ordered labels. Namely we split the deck of N=k^tq cards (where t>=1 is maximal) into k equally sized stacks and then take the top card off of each stack and sort them by the order of…

The problem of pattern selection arises when the evolution equations have many solutions, whereas observed patterns constitute a much more restricted set. An approach is advanced for treating the problem of pattern selection by defining the…

Apportionment is the act of distributing the seats of a legislature among political parties (or states) in proportion to their vote shares (or populations). A famous impossibility by Balinski and Young (2001) shows that no apportionment…