Efficient Plant Arrangements
Disciplines
Discrete Mathematics and Combinatorics | Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Abstract (300 words maximum)
Ecologists are interested in how the growth of plants is affected by the species of plants seeded nearby. In this problem, we are specifically looking at the effects of the species of plants placed equidistant from some focal plant. We accomplish this by placing the plants on a triangular grid, where each plant of interest is surrounded by a neighborhood of six equidistant plants. We are only concerned with the species of the plants in a neighborhood, not the relative position of them to the plant of interest. Given k plant species, how can we efficiently arrange plants on a triangular grid such that each possible neighborhood appears?
Academic department under which the project should be listed
CSM - Mathematics
Primary Investigator (PI) Name
Jennifer Vandenbussche
Efficient Plant Arrangements
Ecologists are interested in how the growth of plants is affected by the species of plants seeded nearby. In this problem, we are specifically looking at the effects of the species of plants placed equidistant from some focal plant. We accomplish this by placing the plants on a triangular grid, where each plant of interest is surrounded by a neighborhood of six equidistant plants. We are only concerned with the species of the plants in a neighborhood, not the relative position of them to the plant of interest. Given k plant species, how can we efficiently arrange plants on a triangular grid such that each possible neighborhood appears?