Talk: William Gasarch "The Muffin Problem"
Friday, September 12, 2025 · 10:30 - 11:30 AM
The Muffin Problem
Talk by William Gasarch. Work with Erik Metz, Daniel Smolyak, Jacob Prinz, University of Maryland at College Park.
Let's say you have 5 muffins and you want to cut them up and give them out to Alice, Bob, and Carol so that they each get 5/3. This is easy- You can cut each one into 1/3-1/3-1/3 and give each person five 1/3-pieces.
But then the smallest piece is 1/3. Can we do better? Is there a way to divide 5 muffins for 3 people so that the smallest piece is BIGGER than 1/3? What is the BEST you can do? More generally: Given m muffins and s students, how can you divide m muffins for s students so that each student gets m/s and the SMALLEST piece is MAXIMIZED?
We will discuss various techniques to solve this problem. We will also discuss why this was a good research project.