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This paper considers some computational issues related to the problem of the coupon collector behavior. In addition, we propose a simulation algorithm to find the solution to the problem, where we present as a numerical illustration an album of stickers related to the Qatar 2022 Official Football World Cup, which is being sold in Brazilian newsstands. In this case, the complete album has N = 670 stickers, which are sold in packages containing n = 5 stickers each. The simulation was based on a computational code written in R. For this application we obtained as a solution, an average number of 950 packages needed to complete the album, at an average cost of 3,800 reals (Brazilian currency), assuming that the collector does not exchange any of its repetitions with nobody. All computer code used in this article is provided on GitHub. The assumed simulation study could be useful for statistics teachers to motivate their students for lectures in computational statistics and fundamentals of probability., Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures

This is a theoretical and computational strategy exploration of the visually attractive game IQ-Link. Not all games which are visually appealing are worthy of your time as a puzzlist. This analysis gives a would-be addict some idea of what type of game they are falling for., Comment: 19 pages, 26 figures, MOVES 2019 (MOMATH)

This special issue on Peg Solitaire has been put together by John Beasley as guest editor, and reports work by John Harris, Alain Maye, Jean-Charles Meyrignac, George Bell, and others. Topics include: short solutions on the 6 x 6 board and the 37-hole "French" board, solving generalized cross boards and long-arm boards. Five new problems are given for readers to solve, with solutions provided., Comment: 11 pages, 7 figures; The Games and Puzzles Journal, Issue 28, September 2003, http://gpj.connectfree.co.uk/gpjj.htm

Maybe the first inverse problem presented in the history of the occidental thought is described in the book Republic, written by Plato. The problem is posed in the Book VII in a text known as the Allegory of the Cave. That text motivated us to formulate a simple mathematical model that simulates, in a sense, the situation of the persons described in that problem., Comment: 23 pages and 20 figures

A recent paper proposing a model of the limiting speed of the domino effect is discussed with reference to its need and the need of models in general for validation against experimental data. It is shown that the proposed model diverges significantly from experimentally derived speed estimates over a significant range of domino spacing using data from the existing literature and this author's own measurements, hence if its use had had economic importance its use outside its range of validity could have led to loses of one sort or another to its users., Comment: 8 pages and 3 figures

This mathematical recreation extends the analysis of a recent paper, asking when a traveller at a bus stop and not knowing the time of the next bus is best advised to wait or to start walking toward the destination. A detailed analysis and solution is provided for a very general class of probability distributions of bus arrival time, and the solution characterised in terms of a function analogous to the hazard rate in reliability theory. The note also considers the question of intermediate stops. It is found that the optimal strategy is not always the laziest, even when headways are not excessively long. For the common special case where one knows the (uniform) headway but not the exact timetable, it is shown that one should wait if the headway is less than the walking time (less bus travel time), and walk if the headway is more than twice this much. In between it may be better to wait or to walk, depending on one's confidence in being able to catch up to a passing bus., Comment: 5 pages

We investigate the game of peg solitaire on different board shapes, and find those of diamond or rhombus shape have interesting properties. When one peg captures many pegs consecutively, this is called a sweep. Rhombus boards of side 6 have the property that no matter which peg is missing at the start, the game can be solved to one peg using a maximal sweep of length 16. We show how to construct a solution on a rhombus board of side 6i, where the final move is a maximal sweep of length r, where r=(9i-1)(3i-1) is a "rhombic matchstick number"., Comment: 11 pages, 12 figures

Triangular peg solitaire is a well-known one-person game or puzzle. When one peg captures many pegs consecutively, this is called a sweep. We investigate whether the game can end in a dramatic fashion, with one peg sweeping all remaining pegs off the board. For triangular boards of side 6 and 8 (with 21 and 36 holes, respectively) the geometrically longest sweep can occur as the final move in a game. On larger triangular boards, we demonstrate how to construct solutions that finish with arbitrarily long sweeps. We also consider the problem of finding solutions that minimize the total number of moves (where a move is one or more consecutive jumps by the same peg)., Comment: 12 pages, 10 figures; minor error fixed in Table 1

How far off the edge of the table can we reach by stacking $n$ identical, homogeneous, frictionless blocks of length 1? A classical solution achieves an overhang of $1/2 H_n$, where $H_n ~ \ln n$ is the $n$th harmonic number. This solution is widely believed to be optimal. We show, however, that it is, in fact, exponentially far from optimality by constructing simple $n$-block stacks that achieve an overhang of $c n^{1/3}$, for some constant $c>0$., Comment: 27 pages, 24 figures. To appear in American Mathematical Monthly

The solitaire army is a one-person peg jumping game where a player attempts to advance an "army" of pegs as far as possible into empty territory. The game was introduced by John Conway and is also known as "Conway's Soldiers". We consider various generalizations of this game in different 2D geometries, unify them under a common mathematical framework, and find the minimum size army capable of advancing a given number of steps., Comment: 22 pages, 12 figures

We study the classical game of peg solitaire when diagonal jumps are allowed. We prove that on many boards, one can begin from a full board with one peg missing, and finish with one peg anywhere on the board. We then consider the problem of finding solutions that minimize the number of moves (where a move is one or more jumps by the same peg), and find the shortest solution to the "central game", which begins and ends at the center. In some cases we can prove analytically that our solutions are the shortest possible, in other cases we apply A* or bidirectional search heuristics., Comment: 20 pages, 11 figures

We will first solve the following problem analytically: given a piece of wire of specified length, we will find where the wire should be cut and bent to form two regular polygons not necessarily having the same number of sides, so that the combined area of the polygons thus formed is maximized, minimized, greater than, and less than a specified area. We will extend the results to the cases where the wire is divided into three and finally into an arbitrary number of segments. The second problem we will solve is as follows: two wires of specified length are to be bent into two regular polygons whose total number of sides is fixed. We will determine how the total number of polygonal sides are to be allocated between the wires so that the total area of the polygons is maximized. We will extend the results found here to the case where we are given any number of wires of specified length., Comment: 21 pages, no figures, computer code