Chocolate Numbers
Caleb Ji
The Bear Creek School
Redmond, WA 98053
USA
Tanya Khovanova
Department of Mathematics
MIT
Cambridge, MA 02139
USA
Robin Park
Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology
Alexandria, VA 22312
USA
Angela Song
Phillips Exeter Academy
Exeter, NH 03833
USA
Abstract:
In this paper, we consider a game played on a rectangular
m × n gridded
chocolate bar. Each move, a player breaks the bar along a grid line.
Each move after that consists of taking any piece of chocolate and
breaking it again along existing grid lines, until just
mn individual
squares remain.
This paper enumerates the number of ways to break an
m × n bar, which we
call chocolate numbers, and introduces four new sequences related to
chocolate numbers. Using various techniques, we prove interesting
divisibility results regarding chocolate number sequences.
Full version: pdf,
dvi,
ps,
latex
(Concerned with sequences
A000142
A045468
A257281
A261746
A261747
A261964.)
Received September 21 2015; revised versions received November 29 2015; December 26 2015.
Published in Journal of Integer Sequences, December 29 2015.
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