Related papers: Permutation Reconstruction from Differences

We prove that deciding whether a given input word contains as subsequence every possible permutation of integers $\{1,2,\ldots,n\}$ is coNP-complete. The coNP-completeness holds even when given the guarantee that the input word contains as…

In this paper we study combinatorial aspects of permutations of $\{1,\ldots,n\}$ and related topics. In particular, we prove that there is a unique permutation $\pi$ of $\{1,\ldots,n\}$ such that all the numbers $k+\pi(k)$ ($k=1,\ldots,n$)…

The reconstruction problem for permutations on $n$ elements from their erroneous patterns which are distorted by transpositions is presented in this paper. It is shown that for any $n \geq 3$ an unknown permutation is uniquely…

We study a family of sorting match puzzles on grids, which we call permutation match puzzles. In this puzzle, each row and column of a $n \times n$ grid is labeled with an ordering constraint -- ascending (A) or descending (D) -- and the…

We present a natural, combinatorial problem whose solution is given by the meta-Fibonacci recurrence relation $a(n) = \sum_{i=1}^p a(n-i+1 - a(n-i))$, where $p$ is prime. This combinatorial problem is less general than those given in [3]…

In this paper, we investigate the reconstruction of permutations on {1, 2, ..., n} from betweenness constraints involving the minimum and the maximum element located between t and t+1, for all t=1, 2, ..., n-1. We propose two variants of…

We study the query complexity of a permutation-based variant of the guessing game Mastermind. In this variant, the secret is a pair $(z,\pi)$ which consists of a binary string $z \in \{0,1\}^n$ and a permutation $\pi$ of $[n]$. The secret…

Let $\mathbb{Z}_n$ denote the ring of integers modulo $n$. In this paper we consider two extremal problems on permutations of $\mathbb{Z}_n$, namely, the maximum size of a collection of permutations such that the sum of any two distinct…

The NP-complete Permutation Pattern Matching problem asks whether a permutation P (the pattern) can be matched into a permutation T (the text). A matching is an order-preserving embedding of P into T. In the Generalized Permutation Pattern…

Let $n$ be a fixed integer with $n\geq 2$. For $i,j\in\mathbb{Z}_n$, define $||i,j||_n$ to be the distance between $i$ and $j$ when the elements of $\mathbb{Z}_n$ are written in a cycle. So $||i,j||_n=\min\{(i-j)\bmod n,(j-i)\bmod n\}$. For…

Let $n$ and $k$ be positive integers with $n>k$. Given a permutation $(\pi_1,\ldots,\pi_n)$ of integers $1,\ldots,n$, we consider $k$-consecutive sums of $\pi$, i.e., $s_i:=\sum_{j=0}^{k-1}\pi_{i+j}$ for $i=1,\ldots,n$, where we let…

We prove computational intractability of variants of checkers: (1) deciding whether there is a move that forces the other player to win in one move is NP-complete; (2) checkers where players must always be able to jump on their turn is…

Permutation Pattern Matching (or PPM) is a decision problem whose input is a pair of permutations $\pi$ and $\tau$, represented as sequences of integers, and the task is to determine whether $\tau$ contains a subsequence order-isomorphic to…

We prove the computational intractability of rotating and placing $n$ square tiles into a $1 \times n$ array such that adjacent tiles are compatible--either equal edge colors, as in edge-matching puzzles, or matching tab/pocket shapes, as…

We consider the problem of reconstructing compositions of an integer from their subcompositions, which was raised by Raykova (albeit disguised as a question about layered permutations). We show that every composition w of n\ge 3k+1 can be…

Let $\pi_n$ be a uniformly chosen random permutation on $[n]$. Using an analysis of the probability that two overlapping consecutive $k$-permutations are order isomorphic, we show that the expected number of distinct consecutive patterns in…

A permutation \pi of an abelian group G is said to destroy arithmetic progressions (APs) if, whenever (a,b,c) is a non-trivial 3-term AP in G, that is c-b=b-a and a,b,c are not all equal, then (\pi(a),\pi(b),\pi(c)) is not an AP. In a paper…

Let $\pi_n$ be a uniformly chosen random permutation on $[n]$. The authors of [2] showed that the expected number of distinct consecutive patterns of all lengths $k\in\{1,2,\ldots,n\}$ in $\pi_n$ was $\frac{n^2}{2}(1-o(1))$ as $n\to\infty$,…

Let $\pi_n$ be a uniformly chosen random permutation on $[n]$. Using an analysis of the probability that two overlapping consecutive $k$-permutations are order isomorphic, the authors of a recent paper showed that the expected number of…

A permutation $\pi$ is said to be {\em Dumont permutations of the first kind} if each even integer in $\pi$ must be followed by a smaller integer, and each odd integer is either followed by a larger integer or is the last element of $\pi$…