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Cutting a Pancake Using an Exotic Knife
Neil Sloane, The OEIS Foundation and Rutgers University
Location: https://rutgers.zoom.us/j/95103383827 password: 6564120420
Date & time: Thursday, 11 September 2025 at 5:00PM - 6:00PM
In the first chapter of their classic book "Concrete Mathematics", Graham, Knuth, and Potashnik consider the maximum number of pieces that can be obtained from a pancake by making n cuts with a knife-blade that is straight, or bent into a V, or bent twice into a Z. We extend this work by considering knives, or "cookie-cutters", of even more exotic shapes, including a k-armed V, a chain of k connected line segments, or are shaped like one of the upper-case letters A, E, L, M, T, W, X, Y, or the less-familiar Wu. In most cases we are able to give an explicit formula for the maximum number of pieces. This talk is based on joint work with David O. H. Cutler