The Watchdog and the Burglar:

About the Book

The four reports in this document are the following: 1) The Watchdog and the Burglar, published in the Naval Research Logistics Quarterly 2) Mathematical Derivation of the "The Watchdog and the Burglar" Results 3) An Extension of "The Watchdog and the Burglar" Problem 4) A Recursive Form of "The Watchdog and the Burglar" Problem

About the Author

Upon leaving graduate school, Arthur Ziffer started working at the US Naval Research Laboratory in the computer programming group. Because of his strong mathematics background, he soon switched to the operations research analysis group. There he worked on a military pursuit problem designated as the Watchdog and the Burglar. The work entailed an application of the Theory of Games and Economic Behavior as developed by John Von Neuman and Oscar Morgenstern and later on by other mathematicians. This work resulted in four reports, one of which was published in the Naval Research Logistics Quarterly. The author is also a playwright having written, among other plays, two plays about the mathematician, Isaac Newton, “On the Shoulders of Giants” and “Isaac and Amanda.” These two plays were coauthored with Herbert Hauptman, the first mathematician to win a Nobel prize; he won it in chemistry (since there is no prize for mathematics) in 1985 for his work in crystallography.