English

Schreier Sets of Intervals, Super-Schreier Sets, and Catalan Numbers

Combinatorics 2026-08-06 v1

Abstract

A finite nonempty set FNF\subset\mathbb{N} is Schreier if minFF\min F\ge |F|. First, we prove a linear recurrence relation and compute initial counts for Schreier sets consisting of intervals. Two intervals of integers are separated if their union is not an interval. If Jk,n\mathcal J_{k,n} is the collection of Schreier sets that are the union of exactly kk separated intervals, then the sequence (Jk,n)n=1(|\mathcal{J}_{k,n}|)_{n=1}^\infty satisfies the characteristic polynomial pk(x)=(x1)2k+1(x+1)kp_k(x) = (x-1)^{2k+1}(x+1)^k. Furthermore, we introduce the new concept of kk-super-Schreier sets and let Sk,n\mathcal{S}_{k,n} denote the collection of kk-super Schreier sets whose maximum is nn. We show that the sequence (Sk,n)n=1(|\mathcal{S}_{k,n}|)_{n=1}^\infty satisfies a Fibonacci-type recurrence with a remainder term expressible as a polynomial of nn.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2608.06076,
  title  = {Schreier Sets of Intervals, Super-Schreier Sets, and Catalan Numbers},
  author = {Hung Viet Chu and Mariam Khaduri and Moiz M. Khokhar and Ruoan Zhou},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2608.06076},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

22 pages, 4 tables