Maker-Breaker Game
A Maker-Breaker game is a kind of positional game. Like most positional games, it is described by its set of ''positions/points/elements'' (X) and its family of ''winning-sets'' (\mathcal- a family of subsets of X). It is played by two players, called Maker and Breaker, who alternately take previously-untaken elements. In a Maker-Breaker game, Maker wins if he manages to hold all the elements of a winning-set, while Breaker wins if he manages to prevent this, i.e. to hold at least one element in each winning-set. Draws are not possible. In each Maker-Breaker game, either Maker or Breaker has a winning strategy. The main research question about these games is which of these two options holds. Examples A classic Maker-Breaker game is Hex. There, the winning-sets are all paths from the left side of the board to the right side. Maker wins by owning a connected path; Breaker wins by owning a connected path from top to bottom, since it blocks all connected paths from left to right. ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Positional Game
A positional game is a kind of a combinatorial game for two players. It is described by: *Xa finite set of elements. Often ''X'' is called the ''board'' and its elements are called ''positions''. *\mathcala family of subsets of X. These subsets are usually called the ''winning-sets''. * A criterion for winning the game. During the game, players alternately claim previously-unclaimed positions, until one of the players wins. If all positions in X are taken while no player wins, the game is considered a draw. The classic example of a positional game is Tic-tac-toe. In it, X contains the 9 squares of the game-board, \mathcal contains the 8 lines that determine a victory (3 horizontal, 3 vertical and 2 diagonal), and the winning criterion is: the first player who holds an entire winning-set wins. Other examples of positional games are Hex and the Shannon switching game. For every positional game there are exactly three options: either the first player has a winning strategy, or ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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John Selfridge
John Lewis Selfridge (February 17, 1927 – October 31, 2010), was an American mathematician who contributed to the fields of analytic number theory, computational number theory, and combinatorics. Education Selfridge received his Ph.D. in 1958 from the University of California, Los Angeles under the supervision of Theodore Motzkin. Career Selfridge served on the faculties of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Northern Illinois University from 1971 to 1991 (retirement), chairing the Department of Mathematical Sciences 1972–1976 and 1986–1990. He was executive editor of Mathematical Reviews from 1978 to 1986, overseeing the computerization of its operations. He was a founder of the Number Theory Foundation, which has named its Selfridge prize in his honour. Research In 1962, he proved that 78,557 is a Sierpinski number; he showed that, when ''k'' = 78,557, all numbers of the form ''k''2''n'' + 1 have a factor in the covering set . Five ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Biased Positional Game
A biased positional game is a variant of a positional game. Like most positional games, it is described by a set of ''positions/points/elements'' (X) and a family of subsets (\mathcal), which are usually called the ''winning-sets''. It is played by two players who take turns picking elements until all elements are taken. While in the standard game each player picks one element per turn, in the biased game each player takes a different number of elements. More formally, for every two positive integers ''p'' and ''q'', a (p:q)-positional game is a game in which the first player picks ''p'' elements per turn and the second player picks ''q'' elements per turn. The main question of interest regarding biased positional games is what is their ''threshold bias'' - what is the bias in which the winning-power switches from one player to the other player. Example As an example, consider the ''triangle game''. In this game, the elements are all edges of a complete graph on ''n'' vertices, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Arithmetic Progression Game
The arithmetic progression game is a positional game where two players alternately pick numbers, trying to occupy a complete arithmetic progression of a given size. The game is parameterized by two integers ''n'' > ''k''. The game-board is the set . The winning-sets are all the arithmetic progressions of length ''k''. In a Maker-Breaker game variant, the first player (Maker) wins by occupying a ''k''-length arithmetic progression, otherwise the second player (Breaker) wins. The game is also called the van der Waerden game, named after Van der Waerden's theorem. It says that, for any ''k'', there exists some integer ''W''(2,''k'') such that, if the integers are partitioned arbitrarily into two sets, then at least one set contains an arithmetic progression of length ''k''. This means that, if n \geq W(2,k), then Maker has a winning strategy. Unfortunately, this claim is not constructive - it does not show a specific strategy for Maker. Moreover, the current upper bound for ' ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Clique Game
The clique game is a positional game where two players alternately pick edges, trying to occupy a complete clique of a given size. The game is parameterized by two integers ''n'' > ''k''. The game-board is the set of all edges of a complete graph on ''n'' vertices. The winning-sets are all the cliques on ''k'' vertices. There are several variants of this game: * In the strong positional variant of the game, the first player who holds a ''k''-clique wins. If no one wins, the game is a draw. * In the Maker-Breaker variant , the first player (Maker) wins if he manages to hold a ''k''-clique, otherwise the second player (Breaker) wins. There are no draws. * In the Avoider-Enforcer variant, the first player (Avoider) wins if he manages ''not'' to hold a ''k''-clique. Otherwise, the second player (Enforcer) wins. There are no draws. A special case of this variant is Sim. The clique game (in its strong-positional variant) was first presented by Paul Erdős and John Selfridge, who at ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Property B
In mathematics, Property B is a certain set theoretic property. Formally, given a finite set ''X'', a collection ''C'' of subsets of ''X'' has Property B if we can partition ''X'' into two disjoint subsets ''Y'' and ''Z'' such that every set in ''C'' meets both ''Y'' and ''Z''. The property gets its name from mathematician Felix Bernstein, who first introduced the property in 1908. Property B is equivalent to 2-coloring the hypergraph described by the collection ''C''. A hypergraph with property B is also called 2-colorable. Sometimes it is also called bipartite, by analogy to the bipartite graphs. Property B is often studied for uniform hypergraphs (set systems in which all subsets of the system have the same cardinality) but it has also been considered in the non-uniform case. The problem of checking whether a collection ''C'' has Property B is called the set splitting problem. Smallest set-families without property B The smallest number of sets in a collection of se ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Probabilistic Method
The probabilistic method is a nonconstructive method, primarily used in combinatorics and pioneered by Paul Erdős, for proving the existence of a prescribed kind of mathematical object. It works by showing that if one randomly chooses objects from a specified class, the probability that the result is of the prescribed kind is strictly greater than zero. Although the proof uses probability, the final conclusion is determined for ''certain'', without any possible error. This method has now been applied to other areas of mathematics such as number theory, linear algebra, and real analysis, as well as in computer science (e.g. randomized rounding), and information theory. Introduction If every object in a collection of objects fails to have a certain property, then the probability that a random object chosen from the collection has that property is zero. Similarly, showing that the probability is (strictly) less than 1 can be used to prove the existence of an object that does ''not ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Graph Coloring
In graph theory, graph coloring is a special case of graph labeling; it is an assignment of labels traditionally called "colors" to elements of a graph subject to certain constraints. In its simplest form, it is a way of coloring the vertices of a graph such that no two adjacent vertices are of the same color; this is called a vertex coloring. Similarly, an edge coloring assigns a color to each edge so that no two adjacent edges are of the same color, and a face coloring of a planar graph assigns a color to each face or region so that no two faces that share a boundary have the same color. Vertex coloring is often used to introduce graph coloring problems, since other coloring problems can be transformed into a vertex coloring instance. For example, an edge coloring of a graph is just a vertex coloring of its line graph, and a face coloring of a plane graph is just a vertex coloring of its dual. However, non-vertex coloring problems are often stated and studied as-is. This is ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Transactions Of The American Mathematical Society
The ''Transactions of the American Mathematical Society'' is a monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal of mathematics published by the American Mathematical Society. It was established in 1900. As a requirement, all articles must be more than 15 printed pages. See also * ''Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society'' * '' Journal of the American Mathematical Society'' * ''Memoirs of the American Mathematical Society'' * ''Notices of the American Mathematical Society'' * ''Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society'' External links * ''Transactions of the American Mathematical Society''on JSTOR JSTOR (; short for ''Journal Storage'') is a digital library founded in 1995 in New York City. Originally containing digitized back issues of academic journals, it now encompasses books and other primary sources as well as current issues of j ... American Mathematical Society academic journals Mathematics journals Publications established in 1900 {{math-journal-st ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Chromatic Number
In graph theory, graph coloring is a special case of graph labeling; it is an assignment of labels traditionally called "colors" to elements of a graph subject to certain constraints. In its simplest form, it is a way of coloring the vertices of a graph such that no two adjacent vertices are of the same color; this is called a vertex coloring. Similarly, an edge coloring assigns a color to each edge so that no two adjacent edges are of the same color, and a face coloring of a planar graph assigns a color to each face or region so that no two faces that share a boundary have the same color. Vertex coloring is often used to introduce graph coloring problems, since other coloring problems can be transformed into a vertex coloring instance. For example, an edge coloring of a graph is just a vertex coloring of its line graph, and a face coloring of a plane graph is just a vertex coloring of its dual. However, non-vertex coloring problems are often stated and studied as-is. This is ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Perfect Binary Tree
In computer science, a binary tree is a k-ary k = 2 tree data structure in which each node has at most two children, which are referred to as the ' and the '. A recursive definition using just set theory notions is that a (non-empty) binary tree is a tuple (''L'', ''S'', ''R''), where ''L'' and ''R'' are binary trees or the empty set and ''S'' is a singleton set containing the root. Some authors allow the binary tree to be the empty set as well. From a graph theory perspective, binary (and K-ary) trees as defined here are arborescences. A binary tree may thus be also called a bifurcating arborescence—a term which appears in some very old programming books, before the modern computer science terminology prevailed. It is also possible to interpret a binary tree as an undirected, rather than a directed graph, in which case a binary tree is an ordered, rooted tree. Some authors use rooted binary tree instead of ''binary tree'' to emphasize the fact that the tree is rooted, but ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Journal Of Combinatorial Theory
The ''Journal of Combinatorial Theory'', Series A and Series B, are mathematical journals specializing in combinatorics and related areas. They are published by Elsevier. ''Series A'' is concerned primarily with structures, designs, and applications of combinatorics. ''Series B'' is concerned primarily with graph and matroid theory. The two series are two of the leading journals in the field and are widely known as ''JCTA'' and ''JCTB''. The journal was founded in 1966 by Frank Harary and Gian-Carlo Rota.They are acknowledged on the journals' title pages and Web sites. SeEditorial board of JCTA Editorial board of JCTB Originally there was only one journal, which was split into two parts in 1971 as the field grew rapidly. An electronic, [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |