English

Partial shuffles by lazy swaps

Combinatorics 2022-10-25 v1

Abstract

What is the smallest number of random transpositions (meaning that we swap given pairs of elements with given probabilities) that we can make on an nn-point set to ensure that each element is uniformly distributed -- in the sense that the probability that ii is mapped to jj is 1/n1/n for all ii and jj? And what if we insist that each pair is uniformly distributed? In this paper we show that the minimum for the first problem is about 12nlog2n\frac{1}{2} n \log_2 n, with this being exact when nn is a power of 22. For the second problem, we show that, rather surprisingly, the answer is not quadratic: O(nlog2n)O(n \log^2 n) random transpositions suffice. We also show that if we ask only that the pair 1,21,2 is uniformly distributed then the answer is 2n32n-3. This proves a conjecture of Groenland, Johnston, Radcliffe and Scott.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2210.13286,
  title  = {Partial shuffles by lazy swaps},
  author = {Barnabás Janzer and J. Robert Johnson and Imre Leader},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2210.13286},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

15 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-28T04:21:57.803Z