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arXiv · 1509.08276

Finding a non-minority ball with majority answers

Dániel Gerbner·Balázs Keszegh·Dömötör Pálvölgyi·Balázs Patkós·Máté Vizer·Gábor Wiener
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Abstract

Suppose we are given a set of $n$ balls $\{b_1,\ldots,b_n\}$ each colored either red or blue in some way unknown to us. To find out some information about the colors, we can query any triple of balls $\{b_{i_1},b_{i_2},b_{i_3}\}$. As an answer to such a query we obtain (the index of) a {\em majority ball}, that is, a ball whose color is the same as the color of another ball from the triple. Our goal is to find a {\em non-minority ball}, that is, a ball whose color occurs at least $\frac n2$ times among the $n$ balls. We show that the minimum number of queries needed to solve this problem is $Θ(n)$ in the adaptive case and $Θ(n^3)$ in the non-adaptive case. We also consider some related problems.

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Dániel Gerbner, Balázs Keszegh, Dömötör Pálvölgyi, Balázs Patkós, Máté Vizer, Gábor Wiener. 2016-09-28. Finding a non-minority ball with majority answers. https://arxiv.org/abs/1509.08276

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