Abstract
How many questions are necessary to guess an unknown number x in the set S = {1, 2,...,n}, by using only comparison questions, that is questions of the type “Is x ≤ a?”, when answers are received with a constant delay d; and up to a constant number c of the answers can be lost, i.e. can be not received at all? We exactly solve this problem for all integers d ≥ 0 and c = 1. We also briefly discuss the analogy between the above problem and that of broadcasting over a fully connected network with link latency.
This work was partially supported by an ENEA grant and by Progetto Cofinanziato: “Allocazioni di Risorse su Reti di Calcolatori”
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Cicalese, F., Vaccaro, U. (2000). Coping with Delays and Time-Outs in Binary Search Procedures. In: Goos, G., Hartmanis, J., van Leeuwen, J., Lee, D.T., Teng, SH. (eds) Algorithms and Computation. ISAAC 2000. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1969. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-40996-3_9
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