Counting records in a random, non-uniform, permutation
Abstract
Counting permutations of by the number of records, i.e. left-to-right maxima, is a classic problem in combinatorial enumeration. In the first volume of ``The Art of Computer Programming", Donald Knuth demonstrated its relevance for analysis of average case complexity of a basic algorithm for determining a maximum in a linear list of numbers. It is well known that the expected, and likely, number of those records in a {\it uniformly\/} random permutation is asymptotic to . Cyril Banderier, Rene Beier, and Kurt Mehlhorn studied the case of a non-uniform random permutation, which is obtained from a generic permutation of by selecting its elements one after another independently with probability , and permuting the selected elements uniformly at random. They proved that , the largest expected number of the maxima, is between and if is fixed. For and simultaneously , we prove that is exactly of order .
Cite
@article{arxiv.2501.06905,
title = {Counting records in a random, non-uniform, permutation},
author = {Boris Pittel},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2501.06905},
year = {2025}
}