No Arabic abstract
It is presented the simplest known disproof of the Borsuk conjecture stating that if a bounded subset of n-dimensional Euclidean space contains more than n points, then the subset can be partitioned into n+1 nonempty parts of smaller diameter. The argument is due to N. Alon and is a remarkable application of combinatorics and algebra to geometry. This note is purely expository and is accessible for students.
Karasev conjectured that for any set of $3k$ lines in general position in the plane, which is partitioned into $3$ color classes of equal size $k$, the set can be partitioned into $k$ colorful 3-subsets such that all the triangles formed by the subsets have a point in common. Although the general conjecture is false, we show that Karasevs conjecture is true for lines in convex position. We also discuss possible generalizations of this result.
We obtain a unification of two refinements of Eulers partition theorem respectively due to Bessenrodt and Glaisher. A specialization of Bessenrodts insertion algorithm for a generalization of the Andrews-Olsson partition identity is used in our combinatorial construction.
A realisation of a metric $d$ on a finite set $X$ is a weighted graph $(G,w)$ whose vertex set contains $X$ such that the shortest-path distance between elements of $X$ considered as vertices in $G$ is equal to $d$. Such a realisation $(G,w)$ is called optimal if the sum of its edge weights is minimal over all such realisations. Optimal realisations always exist, although it is NP-hard to compute them in general, and they have applications in areas such as phylogenetics, electrical networks and internet tomography. In [Adv. in Math. 53, 1984, 321-402] A.~Dress showed that the optimal realisations of a metric $d$ are closely related to a certain polytopal complex that can be canonically associated to $d$ called its tight-span. Moreover, he conjectured that the (weighted) graph consisting of the zero- and one-dimensional faces of the tight-span of $d$ must always contain an optimal realisation as a homeomorphic subgraph. In this paper, we prove that this conjecture does indeed hold for a certain class of metrics, namely the class of totally=decomposable metrics whose tight-span has dimension two. As a corollary, it follows that the minimum Manhattan network problem is a special case of finding optimal realisations of two-dimensional totally-decomposable metrics.
We give an exceptionally short derivation of Schroedingers equation by replacing the idealization of a point particle by a density distribution.
A k-dissimilarity map on a finite set X is a function D : X choose k rightarrow R assigning a real value to each subset of X with cardinality k, k geq 2. Such functions, also sometimes known as k-way dissimilarities, k-way distances, or k-semimetrics, are of interest in many areas of mathematics, computer science and classification theory, especially 2-dissimilarity maps (or distances) which are a generalisation of metrics. In this paper, we show how regular subdivisions of the kth hypersimplex can be used to obtain a canonical decomposition of a k-dissimilarity map into the sum of simpler k-dissimilarity maps arising from bipartitions or splits of X. In the special case k = 2, this is nothing other than the well-known split decomposition of a distance due to Bandelt and Dress [Adv. Math. 92 (1992), 47-105], a decomposition that is commonly to construct phylogenetic trees and networks. Furthermore, we characterise those sets of splits that may occur in the resulting decompositions of k-dissimilarity maps. As a corollary, we also give a new proof of a theorem of Pachter and Speyer [Appl. Math. Lett. 17 (2004), 615-621] for recovering k-dissimilarity maps from trees.