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arXiv · 2610.17602

Clean handshake sequences

John Byrne·Colby Sherwood·Ioannis Tsokanos·Brian Wilmarth
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Abstract

After a basketball game, each of the $n$ players on Team A must shake hands with each of the $n$ players on Team B. What is the minimum number of (reversible, ambidextrous) gloves required so that zero germ transmission occurs? We show that the answer is $3n/2+o(n)$ and develop a general theory for prescribed handshake sets.

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John Byrne, Colby Sherwood, Ioannis Tsokanos, Brian Wilmarth. 2026-10-13. Clean handshake sequences. https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.17602

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