English

Variants on a question of Wilf

Commutative Algebra 2018-04-19 v2

Abstract

Let SNS\neq\mathbb N be a numerical semigroup generated by ee elements. In his paper (A Circle-Of-Lights Algorithm for the "Money-Changing Problem", Amer. Math. Monthly 85 (1978), 562--565), H.~S.~Wilf raised the following question: Let Ω\Omega be the number of positive integers not contained in SS and c1c-1 the largest such element. Is it true that the fraction Ωc\frac\Omega c of omitted numbers is at most 11e1-\frac1e? Let BNe1B\subseteq\mathbb N^{e-1} be the complement of an artinian Ne1\mathbb N^{e-1}-ideal. Following a concept of A.~Zhai (An asymptotic result concerning a question of Wilf, arXiv:1111.2779v1 [math.CO]) we relate Wilf's problem to a more general question about the weight distribution on BB with respect to a positive weight vector. An affirmative answer is given in special cases, similar to those considered by R.~Fr\"oberg, C.~Gottlieb, R.~H\"aggkvist (On numerical semigroups, Semigroup Forum, Vol.~35, Issue 1, 1986/1987, 63--83) for Wilf's question.

Cite

@article{arxiv.1804.06141,
  title  = {Variants on a question of Wilf},
  author = {Michael Hellus and Anton Rechenauer and Rolf Waldi},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1804.06141},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

17 pages, 6 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-23T01:26:09.538Z