Question

Pebbling a checkerboard. We are given a checkerboard which has 4 rows and n columns, and has an integer written in each square. We are also given a set of 2n pebbles, and we want to place some or all of these on the checkerboard (each pebble can be placed on exactly one square) so as to max

Answer 1

Answer:

Pebbling a checkerboard. We are given a checkerboard which has 4 rows and n columns, and has an integer written in each square. We are also given a set of 2n pebbles, and we want to place some or all of these on the checkerboard (each pebble can be placed on exactly one square) so as to maximize the sum of the integers in the squares that are covered by pebbles. There is one constraint: for a placement of pebbles to be legal, no two of them can be on horizontally or vertically adjacent squares (diagonal adjacency is fine).

(a) Determine the number of legal patterns that can occur in any column (in isolation, ignoring the pebbles in adjacent columns) and describe these patterns.

Call two patterns compatible if they can be placed on adjacent columns to form a legal placement. Let us consider subproblems consisting of the first k columns 1 ≤ k ≤ n. Each subproblem can be assigned a type, which is the pattern occurring in the last column.