English

The asymptotic number of score sequences

Combinatorics 2025-11-18 v3 Probability

Abstract

A tournament on a graph is an orientation of its edges. The score sequence lists the in-degrees in non-decreasing order. Works by Winston and Kleitman (1983) and Kim and Pittel (2000) showed that the number SnS_n of score sequences on the complete graph KnK_n satisfies Sn=Θ(4n/n5/2)S_n=\Theta(4^n/n^{5/2}). By combining a recent recurrence relation for SnS_n in terms of the Erd\H{o}s--Ginzburg--Ziv numbers NnN_n with the limit theory for discrete infinitely divisible distributions, we observe that n5/2Sn/4neλ/2πn^{5/2}S_n/4^n\to e^\lambda/2\sqrt{\pi}, where λ=k=1Nk/k4k\lambda=\sum_{k=1}^\infty N_k/k4^k. This limit agrees numerically with the asymptotics of SnS_n conjectured by Tak\'acs (1986). We also identify the asymptotic number of strong score sequences, and show that the number of irreducible subscores in a random score sequence converges in distribution to a shifted negative binomial with parameters r=2r=2 and p=eλp=e^{-\lambda}.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2209.13563,
  title  = {The asymptotic number of score sequences},
  author = {Brett Kolesnik},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2209.13563},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

v3: added new results (Corollaries 4 and 5)