Enumerating Seating Arrangements that Obey Social Distancing

By George Spahn and Doron Zeilberger


.pdf    .tex   


Written: Jan. 22, 2024


Dedicated to the memory of Marko Petkovsek (1955-2023)


[To appear in Journal of Symbolic Computation (special issue in memory of Marko Petkovsek)]


We study maximal seating arrangments, either on a line, or in a rectangular auditorium with a fixed number of columns but an arbitrary number of rows, that obey any prescribed set of `social distancing' restrictions. In addition to enumeration, we study the statistical distribution of the density, and give efficient algoirthms for generating these at random.


Added Jan. 25, 2024: read interesting feedback by Mate Puljiz, Stjepan Sebek, and Josip Zubrinic.

Added Jan. 30, 2024: read more detailed feedback by Mate Puljiz, Stjepan Sebek, and Josip Zubrinic.   


Maple packages



Sample Input and Output for SD.txt

Sample Input and Output for SD1row.txt


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