English

On typical triangulations of a convex $n$-gon

Combinatorics 2020-01-03 v2

Abstract

Let fnf_n be a function assigning weight to each possible triangle whose vertices are chosen from vertices of a convex polygon PnP_n of nn sides. Suppose Tn{\mathcal T}_n is a random triangulation, sampled uniformly out of all possible triangulations of PnP_n. We study the sum of weights of triangles in Tn{\mathcal T}_n and give a general formula for average and variance of this random variable. In addition, we look at several interesting special cases of fnf_n in which we obtain explicit forms of generating functions for the sum of the weights. For example, among other things, we give new proofs for already known results such as the degree of a fixed vertex and the number of ears in Tn,{\mathcal T}_n, as well as, provide new results on the number of "blue" angles and refined information on the distribution of angles at a fixed vertex. We note that our approach is systematic and can be applied to many other new examples while generalizing the existing results.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1911.04025,
  title  = {On typical triangulations of a convex $n$-gon},
  author = {Toufik Mansour and Reza Rastegar},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1911.04025},
  year   = {2020}
}