English

The Twelvefold way, the non-intersecting circles problem, and partitions of multisets

Combinatorics 2018-05-22 v2

Abstract

Let nn be a non-negative integer and A={a1,,ak}A=\{a_1,\ldots,a_k\} be a multi-set with kk not necessarily distinct members, where a1aka_1\leqslant\ldots\leqslant a_k. We denote by Δ(n,A)\Delta(n,A) the number of ways to partition nn as the form a1x1++akxka_1x_1+\ldots+a_kx_k, where xix_i's are distinct positive integers and xi<xi+1x_i< x_{i+1} whenever ai=ai+1a_i=a_{i+1}. We give a recursive formula for Δ(n,A)\Delta(n,A) and some explicit formulas for some special cases. Using this notion we solve the non-intersecting circles problem which asks to evaluate the number of ways to draw nn non-intersecting circles in a plane regardless to their sizes. The latter also enumerates the number of unlabelled rooted tree with n+1n+1 vertices.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1501.01997,
  title  = {The Twelvefold way, the non-intersecting circles problem, and partitions of multisets},
  author = {Toufik Mansour and Madjid Mirzavaziri and Daniel Yaqubi},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1501.01997},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

partitions of multisets