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Enumerative combinatorics, graph theory, order theory, posets, matroids, designs and other discrete structures. It also includes algebraic, analytic and probabilistic combinatorics.

3 votes

A combinatorial optimization problem

Consider the bipartite graph whose left vertices are goods and right vertices are buyers. Draw an edge between each good $i$ and buyer $m$ with weight $p_{mi}$. Now, you want to find a max-weight bipa …
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0 votes
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An asymptotic set containment problem

Intuitively, it should approach zero fast as soon as $|\mathcal S_{\mathsf{big}}|$ is at all smaller than $n$ (even like $n/2$) because virtually all subsets $\mathcal S_{\mathsf{small}}$ will contain …
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1 vote

High order central moments of a symmetric binomial variable

I wonder if this perhaps-naive approach can help you. Let's shift by the mean, so consider $X = \sum_{j=1}^n X_j$ where each $X_j = 0.5$ or $-0.5$ independently with one-half probability each. So $\ma …
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3 votes
Accepted

Expected value of maximal displacement in permutations of $\{1,\ldots,n\}$

Fleshing out Boris Bukh's idea. We can draw $\pi$ by first sending $1$ uniformly to somewhere in $\{1,\dots,n\}$, then sending $2$ uniformly to the remaining $n-1$ spots, and so on. Consider a small …
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5 votes
1 answer
318 views

Bounding the max-loaded bin using${m \choose k} \|A\|_k^k$

Throw $m$ balls into $n$ bins independently, each ball selecting a bin from the distribution $A \in \Delta_n$. This question is about lower-bounding the max-loaded bin. Background. In this MO answer I …
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2 votes
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Concentration of the load of the maximally loaded bin ($m$ balls $n$ bins) with nonuniform b...

If you only want upper bounds, there is a nice approach based on collisions. (Proving that the max-loaded bin is not too small w.h.p. seems to need completely different techniques.) Define a $k$-way …
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2 votes

Cauchy-Schwarz and pigeonhole

The contrapositive of PH is: If you put at most one pigeon per hole, then you have at most $n$ pigeons. Letting $a = (1,\dots,1)$ and $b_i$ be the number of pigeons in hole $i$ with $b_i \in \{0,1\}$, …
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5 votes
1 answer
232 views

Balanced binary code that "resists" local decoding?

I am looking for a construction that can be stated as the following coding problem: a binary code with good distance ($d = \Omega(n)$ where codeword length is $n$) that "resists local decoding" in the …
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1 vote

Exact calculation of n-queens solutions

Since this is a well-studied problem, people will be a bit skeptical that you have found a significant improvement that is correct. I would try to look for someone you can contact via email and ask to …
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10 votes
2 answers
1k views

Number of paths through infinite trees with given "growth rates"

(Preface: This may be a naive or easy question for experts....) Consider an infinite tree, rooted on the left, where each node has two children; the number of nodes at each level (distance from the r …
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7 votes

Separating Heavier from the Lighter Balls

The answer is indeed asymptotic to $4n/\log(n)$, but I don't know of an elementary or easy construction for this upper bound. I believe simple probabilistic-method type constructions do not work. Thi …
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1 vote
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Choose uniformly from fixed-length paths in $[0,n]\cap\mathbb{Z}$ with fixed start and end

You can use a "dynamic programming" solution. For anyone unfamiliar with this terms, the basic idea is that there are an exponential in $n,m$ number of possible paths, so it takes too long to enumerat …
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11 votes
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Probability of a graph procedure

Here's one. You can think of the graph construction process as gradually building a set $S$ of vertices that have been touched so far, beginning with a random two vertices. Let $S_k$ be the set of the …
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12 votes

In what rigorous sense are Sperner's Lemma and the Brouwer Fixed Point Theorem equivalent?

The theoretical Computer Science perspective may be useful here. At least, TCS has developed a rigorous and precise sense in which what I'll call "discrete Brouwer" (François' "Approximate Fixed Point …
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1 vote
0 answers
267 views

A natural sum over multisets (expectation over multinomial)

I think this is a natural question but am not sure where to find resources. Consider the possible multisets arising from choosing $n$ times an item from one of $k$ categories. We can represent one su …
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