3 ms·

The Lonely Runner problem

• jessriedel 15y ago
  If the paces are linearly independent over the rational numbers (which is true for "almost all" n-tuples of real numbers), isn't this problem easy? In the theory of almost periodic functions, there's a theorem about the fact that you can treat periodic functions with linearly independent frequencies as statistically independent for the purposes of calculating long-time-average probabilities. I must be missing something.
  • swordswinger12 15y ago
    A similar theorem exists in probability theory, called the Lovasz local lemma. I think the goal of rjpilton's analysis was to do things using elementary methods. That said, you might be able to use your approach for a quick and dirty approximation.
• stoolpigeon 15y ago
  I thought this was about an Iron Maiden song.