Related papers: On the Basis Polynomials in the Theory of Permutat…

We consider a few special cases of the more general question: How many permutations $\pi\in\mathcal{S}_n$ have the property that $\pi^2$ has $j$ descents for some $j$? In this paper, we first enumerate Grassmannian permutations $\pi$ by the…

In this note, we represent integers in a type of factoradic notation. Rather than use the corresponding Lehmer code, we will view integers as permutations. Given a pair of integers n and k, we give a formula for n mod k in terms of the…

Let $n, k$ and $a$ be positive integers. The Stirling numbers of the first kind, denoted by $s(n,k)$, count the number of permutations of $n$ elements with $k$ disjoint cycles. Let $p$ be a prime. In recent years, Lengyel, Komatsu and…

Eulerian polynomials record the distribution of descents over permutations. Caylerian polynomials likewise record the distribution of descents over Cayley permutations, where a Cayley permutation is a word of positive integers such that if…

Let $k$ be a nonnegative integer, and let $\alpha$ and $\beta$ be two permutations of $n$ symbols. We say that $\alpha$ and $\beta$ $k$-commute if $H(\alpha\beta, \beta\alpha)=k$, where $H$ denotes the Hamming metric between permutations.…

Building on the work of Grinberg and Stanley, we begin a systematic study of permutations with a prescribed $X$-descent set. In particular, for a set $X \subseteq \mathbb{N}^2$, and $I \subseteq [n-1]$, we study the permutations $\pi \in…

Let $n$ be a nonnegative integer and $I$ be a finite set of positive integers. In 1915, MacMahon proved that the number of permutations in the symmetric group $\mathfrak{S}_n$ with descent set $I$ is a polynomial in $n$. We call this the…

Let $\mathbb{K}$ be a field of characteristic $0$. For each choice of distinct $a_1, \ldots, a_n\in \mathbb{K}$ and distinct $b_1, \ldots, b_n\in \mathbb{K}$, consider the sum $S=\sum_{i=1}^n a_i b_{\pi(i)}$ as $\pi$ ranges over the…

An alternating permutation of length $n$ is a permutation $\pi=\pi_1 \pi_2 ... \pi_n$ such that $\pi_1 < \pi_2 > \pi_3 < \pi_4 > ...$. Let $A_n$ denote set of alternating permutations of ${1,2,..., n}$, and let $A_n(\sigma)$ be set of…

Answering a question of Donald Knuth, we find the bivariate exponential generating function for "up-up-or-down-down'' permutations of odd length according to their last entry. An up-up-or-down-down permutation is a permutation $a_1a_2\cdots…

We use methods of combinatorial number theory to prove that, for each $n>1$ and any prime $p$, some homotopy group $\pi_i(SU(n))$ contains an element of order $p^{n-1+ord_p([n/p]!)}$, where $ord_p(m)$ denotes the largest integer $\alpha$…

The maximum drop size of a permutation $\pi$ of $[n]=\{1,2,\ldots, n\}$ is defined to be the maximum value of $i-\pi(i)$. Chung, Claesson, Dukes and Graham obtained polynomials $P_k(x)$ that can be used to determine the number of…

Problem 1.5.7 from Pitman's Saint-Flour lecture notes: Does there exist for each n a fragmentation process (\Pi_{n,k}, 1 \leq k \leq n) taking values in the space of partitions of {1,2,...,n} such that \Pi_{n,k} is distributed like the…

In the first paper in this series we estimated the probability that a random permutation $\pi\in\mathcal{S}_n$ has a fixed set of a given size. In this paper, we elaborate on the same method to estimate the probability that $\pi$ has $m$…

Using earlier results we prove a formula for the number $W_{(n,k)}$ of 2-stack sortable permutations of length $n$ with $k$ runs, or in other words, $k-1$ descents. This formula will yield the suprising fact that there are as many 2-stack…

In this paper, we study permutations $\pi \in S_n$ with exactly $m$ transpositions. In particular, we are interested in the expected value of $\pi(1)$ when such permutations are chosen uniformly at random. When $n$ is even, this expected…

Let R(n,k) denote the number of permutations of {1,2,...,n} with k alternating runs. We find a grammatical description of the numbers R(n,k) and then present several convolution formulas involving the generating function for the numbers…

The descent polynomial of a finite $I\subseteq \mathbb{Z}^+$ is the polynomial $d(I,n)$, for which the evaluation at $n>\max(I)$ is the number of permutations on $n$ elements, such that $I$ is the set of indices where the permutation is…

A consecutive pattern in a permutation $\pi$ is another permutation $\sigma$ determined by the relative order of a subsequence of contiguous entries of $\pi$. Traditional notions such as descents, runs and peaks can be viewed as particular…

P(n,s) denotes the number of permutations of 1,2,...n that have exactly s sequences. Canfield and Wilf [math.CO/0609704] recently showed that P(n,s) can be written as a sum of s polynomials in n. We determine these polynomials explicitly…