A1 Refereed original research article in a scientific journal
Distances of group tables and latin squares via equilateral triangle dissections
Authors: Michal Szabados
Publisher: ACADEMIC PRESS INC ELSEVIER SCIENCE
Publishing place: SAN DIEGO; 525 B ST, STE 1900, SAN DIEGO, CA 92101-4495 USA
Publication year: 2014
Journal: Journal of Combinatorial Theory, Series A
Journal name in source: Journal of Combinatorial Theory Series a
Journal acronym: J.Comb.Theory Ser.A
Volume: 123
Issue: 1
First page : 1
Last page: 7
Number of pages: 7
ISSN: 0097-3165
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcta.2013.10.005
Denote by gdist(p) the least non-zero number of cells that have to be changed to get a latin square from the table of addition modulo p. A conjecture of Drapal, Cavenagh and Wanless states that there exists c > 0 such that gdist(p) clog(p). In this paper the conjecture is proved for c approximate to 7.21, and as an intermediate result. it is shown that an equilateral triangle of side n can be non-trivially dissected into at most 5 log(2)(n) integer-sided equilateral triangles. The paper also presents some evidence which suggests that gdist(p)/log(p) approximate to 3.56 for large values of p. (C) 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.