Hammer's Labyrinth and an upper estimate of the amount of best solutions in labyrinths.

246 days ago by PatrickHammer

%hide %latex \begin{document} \title{An upper estimate of the amount of best solutions in labyrinths.} \author{Patrick Hammer} \date{September 7, 2011} \maketitle \section{Definitions} \subsection{Connected Surface} Let $x$ and $y$ be points in the surface $A$. $A$ is a connected surface when: $\forall x,y,x\neq y:$ $\exists$ Path$(A,x,y)\subseteq A$. \subsection{Shortest Path} Let $A$ be a connected surface. The shortest path $S(A,x,y)$ is one of the subsets of the shortest path set $M_S(A,x,y):=\{$Path$(A,x,y)$ $|$ Length$($Path$(A,x,y)) = $ inf$($Length$(\{$Path$(A,x,y)$ $\subseteq$ Paths$(A,x,y)\}$)$))\}$. \subsection{Hole} A hole $H(A)$ of a connected surface $A$, is a connected surface, which is infolded by $A$, so the maximum shortest path length between two points in $H(A)$ is limited by $A$, and there doesn't exist a point which is in both, $H(A)$ and $A$. The hole set $M_H(A)$ contains all holes of $A$. \section{Proposition} \subsection{Hammer's Labyrinth Proposition - Max. amount of shortest paths} Let $A$ be a connected surface, $x,y$ points in it. The amount of shortest paths $|M_S(A,x,y)|$ is as follows: \begin{equation} \nonumber $|M_S(A,x,y)| \leq 2^{|M_H(A)|}$ \end{equation} Proof: We want to get from $x$ to $y$. Because of the triangle inequality, we can reach a point behind a new hole, by a maximum of two best ways: By bypassing it clockwise, and by bypassing it counterclockwise. So every new hole doubles the possibilities at most. \subsection{Hammer's Labyrinth} This is the sort of labyrinth which delivers equality for the previous proposition, it has interesting symmetry properties. \begin{center} \includegraphics[scale=7]{/sagenb/servers/sage_notebook-alpha.sagenb/home/PatrickHammer/47/data/labyrinth.eps} \end{center}