Regarding the suggested equivalence between my "Most Wanted" Problem #1 and a problem related to Golomb rulers, Michael Brundage sent the following email: Michael Brundage (brundage@ipac.caltech.edu) wrote: > Your first problem mentions a relationship to Golomb rulers > (in the "Variations and Comments" section) on which I can > comment. > > First of all, Golomb rulers can be described as a problem in > radioastronomy, where it is necessary to realize all the > distances 1, 2,..., N between pairs of satellite dishes > arranged on a line segment. One (inefficient) solution is > to place a dish at each mark 0, 1, ..., N on a ruler. Then > there is a pair (0, N) which are a distance N apart, and there > are two pairs (0, N-1) and (1, N) which are a distance N-1 > apart, and so on. The idea is to come up with more efficient > solutions, using as few dishes as possible. For example, when > N = 6, the best solution uses only four dishes (or marks on > the ruler): 0, 1, 4, 6. A Golomb ruler is a ruler which has > only these marks on it. > > Put another way, if ink were really expensive but you wanted > a ruler with which you could measure any integer distance (up > to some number N), then a Golomb ruler of length N would be the > most economical way to do it. A Golomb ruler of length 6 would > be one with marks at each end (0 and 6) and marks at 1 and 4 > as well. > > Golomb rulers can also be described as graphs with a certain > labelling property (graceful graphs); these are described in > some detail at > > Brundage on Graceful Graphs > > (soon to be graceful/index.html, but I haven't had the time to > update these pages yet). Each mark on the ruler corresponds > to a vertex in the graph; each time a pair of marks is used to > make a distance, the edge joining those vertices is used. Each > vertex is labelled with the value of the mark; each edge is > labelled with the distance (which is the absolute value of the > difference of its endpoints' labels). > > For example, in the ruler of length six, we end up with the > complete graph on four vertices. The vertices are labelled > 0, 1, 4, and 6, and the edges are labelled 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. > The graph is the skeleton of a tetrahedron, roughly sketched > below (without the edge labels): > > 0 > /|\ > / | \ > / | \ > 1--|--6 > \ | / > \|/ > 4 > > The relation to Problem 1, if I understand it correctly is > this: There are two distinct sets of N collinear points such > that the set of N(N-1)/2 pairwise distances between them are > equal if (but not only if) there are two distinct graceful > labellings of the complete graph on N vertices. > > Unfortunately, the complete graphs on 5 or more vertices are > not graceful. This does not imply that there are no two > distinct sets of N collinear points with the sets of pairwise > distances between them equal; however, it does imply that > if there are N such points (N>4) then the distances are not > consecutive integers. > > When N<4, nothing interesting is happening. When N=4, we > have the graph above, which does have one other graceful > labelling, using 0, 2, 5, and 6. (Every graceful graph has > a second graceful labelling; this is explained in the pages > I mentioned above.) This means that the sets of points > {0, 1, 4, 6} and {0, 2, 5, 6} give rise to the same set of > distances (namely, {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6}). (Presumably, this > is what you mean when you say that a point set and its > "reversal" both give rise to the same set of distances...) > > As you can see, Golomb rulers are different from your Problem > 1, and unfortunately nothing particular interesting happens > where the two overlap, mainly because in a typical Golomb ruler > only the distances between some of the pairs of points are > important, and there are only a few Golomb rulers for which > the distances between all the pairs of points (as in this > problem) are used. > > There is also a generalization of Golomb rulers to "Golomb > rectangles." I haven't really looked into them at all, though > I know there was a paper by James Shearer published in the > second issue of the Electronic Journal of Combinatorics at > > Shearer on Golomb Rectangles > > dealing with them. It may be that something there is relevant, > though I doubt it (since then even more of the distances will > be ignored).