The Elegant Heist: Mastering the Art of Necklace Splitting
Ever wondered how stolen necklaces are tactfully divided? Join us on a captivating journey into the math under necklace splitting! This journey will lead us to a wonderful and very important theorem in mathematics, the Borsuk-Ulam theorem.
Start to jet lag behind. Moving to fairer competitions.
It is safe to say that traveling impacts the peak performance of teams and athletes in general - studies have been done across all kinds of sports that confirm this intuitive idea. Thus, to avoid unfair- and unhappiness, an organizer should aim to minimize the effect of travel time disparities.
The travelling salesman problem
Suppose you have a delivery service. You have one truck and have to deliver a large number of parcels to different cities in the country every day. Then you run into the following problem: in which order should you visit the cities?
A balanced schedule for the Premier League of Darts exists… and is not used…
The Premier League of Darts is an annual competition where the best darts players of the world compete over several months for the title, and the prize of £275.000. However… the schedule chosen by the PDC is unbalanced: some matches between pairs of specific players will occur relatively often, while others will occur very rarely.
Guarding against uncertainty: How Kidney Exchanges can handle unexpected cancellations
Around the world, tens of thousands of people are waiting to receive a kidney transplant. Read how mathematics can help more people receive one.
How the schedule in the TATA Steel Chess Championship forced Carlsen to help Caruana win
Every January, the best chess players in the world compete in the TATA Steel Chess Championship, organized in Wijk aan Zee (The Netherlands). Among this year’s fourteen participants were Magnus Carlsen, world no. 1, coming into the tournament with an unbeaten streak of 104 matches, and Fabiano Caruana, the world no. 2.
How to plan Valentine’s day using a matching algorithm
Finding a dating schedule that matches pairs of potential lovers up into dating couples, is an example of an algorithmic problem. There is a clearly defined input, given by the lists of who is considered an acceptable dating partner to whom. It is also clear what we want as the output: a pairing of classmates into acceptable boy-girl pairs that has as many pairs (dates) as possible. How can you find the best dating schedule?