1. The Muffin Problem
- Author
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Cui, Guangiqi, Dickerson, John, Durvasula, Naveen, Gasarch, William, Metz, Erik, Prinz, Jacob, Raman, Naveen, Smolyak, Daniel, and Yoo, Sung Hyun
- Subjects
05XX ,FOS: Mathematics ,Mathematics - Combinatorics ,Combinatorics (math.CO) - Abstract
You have $m$ muffins and $s$ students. You want to divide the muffins into pieces and give the shares to students such that every student has $\frac{m}{s}$ muffins. Find a divide-and-distribute protocol that maximizes the minimum piece. Let $f(m,s)$ be the minimum piece in the optimal protocol. We prove that $f(m,s)$ exists, is rational, and finding it is computable (though possibly difficult). We show that $f(m,s)$ can be derived from $f(s,m)$; hence we need only consider $m\ge s$. We give a function $FC(m,s)$ such that, for $m\ge s+1$, $f(m,s)\le FC(m,s)$. It is often the case that $f(m,s)=FC(m,s)$. More formally, for all $s$, for all but a finite number of $m$, $f(m,s)=FC(m,s)$. This leads to a nice formula for $f(m,s)$, though there are exceptions to it. We give a formula $INT(m,s)$, which has 6 parts, such that for many of the exceptional $m$, $f(m,s)=INT(m,s), Comment: Paper is outdated and some parts are wrong. There will be a book on this topic soon which will be THE place to get this information!
- Published
- 2017