Enumerating Flat Fubini Rankings

Recall that the set of Fubini rankings on $n$ competitors consists of the $n$-tuples that encode the possible rankings of $n$ competitors in a competition allowing ties. Moreover, recall that a run (weak run) in a tuple is a subsequence of consecutive ascents (weak ascents). If the leading terms of the set of maximally long runs (weak runs) of a tuple are in increasing (weakly increasing) order, then the tuple is said to be flattened (weakly flattened). We define the set of strictly flattened Fubini rankings, which is the subset of Fubini rankings with runs of strict ascents whose leading term are strictly increasing. Analogously, we define the set of weakly flattened Fubini rankings, which is the subset of Fubini rankings with runs of weak ascents whose leading terms are in weakly increasing order. Our main results give formulas for the enumeration of strictly flattened Fubini rankings and weakly flattened Fubini rankings. We also provide some conjectures for further study.