Pith. sign in

REVIEW

Not yet reviewed by Pith; the record is open.

This paper has not been read by Pith yet. Machine review is queued; the pith claim, tier, and objections will appear here once it completes.

SPECIMEN: schema-true, not a live event

T0 review · schema-true

One-sentence machine reading of the paper's core claim.

pith:XXXXXXXX · record.json · timestamp

arxiv 1709.00789 v3 pith:P5YHMDRL submitted 2017-09-04 math.CO math.PR

The combinatorics of the colliding bullets problem

classification math.CO math.PR
keywords bulletsdistributionproblemcollidingnumbersimpleannihilateanother
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal T4 reserved
0 comments
read the original abstract

The finite colliding bullets problem is the following simple problem: consider a gun, whose barrel remains in a fixed direction; let $(V_i)_{1\le i\le n}$ be an i.i.d.\ family of random variables with uniform distribution on $[0,1]$; shoot $n$ bullets one after another at times $1,2,\dots, n$, where the $i$th bullet has speed $V_i$. When two bullets collide, they both annihilate. We give the distribution of the number of surviving bullets, and in some generalisation of this model. While the distribution is relatively simple (and we found a number of bold claims online), our proof is surprisingly intricate and mixes combinatorial and geometric arguments; we argue that any rigorous argument must very likely be rather elaborate.

discussion (0)

Sign in with ORCID, Apple, or X to comment. Anyone can read and Pith papers without signing in.