Blogtrek

Fourth of July

This is the first Fourth after 9/11, so in a sense one can describe this day as (0-)1-4-9-11. As it turns out, these integers have an interesting property. If you put these measurements on a ruler and only these, you can still draw or measure a line of any integer length up to 11 except 6. For example, 7 is 11 - 4, and 3 is 4 - 1. Such a ruler is called a Golomb ruler, and it is an interesting problem to find the minimum Golumb rulers of given lengths.