Sums of the ratings that judges assign to wines are a near universal method of determining the winners and losers of wine competitions. Sums are easy to calculate and easy to communicate, but seven flaws make sums of ratings a perilous guide to relative quality or preference. Stars & Bars combinatorics show that the same sum can be the result of billions of compositions of ratings and that those compositions, for the same sum, can contain dispersion that ranges from universal consensus to apparent randomness to polar disagreement. Order preference models can address both order and dispersion, and an example using a Plackett–Luce model yields maximum likelihood estimates of top-choice probabilities that are a defensible guide to relative quality or preference.

Inspired by Adler’s idea on VC minimal theories [1], we introduce VC-minimal complexity. We show that for any $N\in \mathbb {N}^{>0}$, there is $k_N>0$ such that for any finite bipartite graph $(X,Y;E)$ with VC-minimal complexity $< N$, there exist $X'\subseteq X$, $Y'\subseteq Y$ with $|X'|\geq k_N |X|$, $|Y'|\geq k_N |Y|$ such that $X'\times Y' \subseteq E$ or $X'\times Y'\cap E=\emptyset $.

We provide polynomial upper bounds for the minimal sizes of distal cell decompositions in several kinds of distal structures, particularly weakly o-minimal and P-minimal structures. The bound in general weakly o-minimal structures generalizes the vertical cell decomposition for semialgebraic sets, and the bounds for vector spaces in both o-minimal and p-adic cases are tight. We apply these bounds to Zarankiewicz’s problem in distal structures.

We present a combinatorial proof for the existence of the sign-refined grid homology in lens spaces and a self-contained proof that $\partial _{\mathbb{Z}}^2 = 0$. We also present a Sage programme that computes $\widehat{\mathrm{GH}} (L(p,q),K;\mathbb{Z})$ and provide empirical evidence supporting the absence of torsion in these groups.

We consider a subshift of finite type on q symbols with a union of t cylinders based at words of identical length p as the hole. We explore the relationship between the escape rate into the hole and a rational function, $r(z)$, of correlations between forbidden words in the subshift with the hole. In particular, we prove that there exists a constant $D(t,p)$ such that if $q>D(t,p)$, then the escape rate is faster into the hole when the value of the corresponding rational function $r(z)$ evaluated at $D(t,p)$ is larger. Further, we consider holes which are unions of cylinders based at words of identical length, having zero cross-correlations, and prove that the escape rate is faster into the hole with larger Poincaré recurrence time. Our results are more general than the existing ones known for maps conjugate to a full shift with a single cylinder as the hole.

Let $\mathrm{AP}_k=\{a,a+d,\ldots,a+(k-1)d\}$ be an arithmetic progression. For $\varepsilon>0$ we call a set $\mathrm{AP}_k(\varepsilon)=\{x_0,\ldots,x_{k-1}\}$ an $\varepsilon$-approximate arithmetic progression if for some a and d, $|x_i-(a+id)|<\varepsilon d$ holds for all $i\in\{0,1\ldots,k-1\}$. Complementing earlier results of Dumitrescu (2011, J. Comput. Geom. 2(1) 16–29), in this paper we study numerical aspects of Van der Waerden, Szemerédi and Furstenberg–Katznelson like results in which arithmetic progressions and their higher dimensional extensions are replaced by their $\varepsilon$-approximation.

In this paper we analyze a known relaxation for the Sparsest Cut problem based on positive semidefinite constraints, and we present a branch and bound algorithm and heuristics based on this relaxation. The relaxed formulation and the algorithms were tested on small and moderate sized instances. It leads to values very close to the optimum solution values. The exact algorithm could obtain solutions for small and moderate sized instances, and the best heuristics obtained optimum or near optimum solutions for all testedinstances. The semidefinite relaxation gives a lower bound $\frac{C}{W}$ and each heuristic produces a cut S with a ratio $\frac{c_S}{w_S}$, where either cS is at most a factor of C or wS is at least a factor of W. We solved the semidefinite relaxation using a semi-infinite cut generation with a commercial linear programming package adapted to the sparsest cut problem. We showed that the proposed strategy leads to a better performance compared to the use of a known semidefinite programming solver.

In this paper, we present a combinatorial proof for an identity involving the triangular numbers. The proof resembles Franklin’s proof of Euler’s pentagonal number theorem.

For typical optimization problems, the design space of interest is well defined: It is a subset of Rn, where n is the number of (continuous) variables. Constraints are often introduced to eliminate infeasible regions of this space from consideration. Many engineering design problems can be formulated as search in such a design space. For configuration design problems, however, the design space is much more difficult to define precisely, particularly when constraints are present. Configuration design spaces are discrete and combinatorial in nature, but not necessarily purely combinatorial, as certain combinations represent infeasible designs. One of our primary design objectives is to drastically reduce the effort to explore large combinatorial design spaces. We believe it is imperative to develop methods for mathematically defining design spaces for configuration design. The purpose of this paper is to outline our approach to defining configuration design spaces for engineering design, with an emphasis on the mathematics of the spaces and their combinations into larger spaces that more completely capture design requirements. Specifically, we introduce design spaces that model physical connectivity, functionality, and assemblability considerations for a representative product family, a class of coffeemakers. Then, we show how these spaces can be combined into a “common” product variety design space. We demonstrate how constraints can be defined and applied to these spaces so that feasible design regions can be directly modeled. Additionally, we explore the topological and combinatorial properties of these spaces. The application of this design space modeling methodology is illustrated using the coffeemaker product family.

The distribution of the number of items drawn in a secretary problem, with an order s selection role and a success if any of the best s items is selected, is obtained by a probabilistic argument. Moments and asymptotics readily follow.