Related papers: The Yellowstone Permutation
The EKG or electrocardiogram sequence is defined by a(1) = 1, a(2) = 2 and, for n >= 3, a(n) is the smallest natural number not already in the sequence with the property that gcd {a(n-1), a(n)} > 1. In spite of its erratic local behavior,…
Aronson's sequence 1, 4, 11, 16, ... is defined by the English sentence ``t is the first, fourth, eleventh, sixteenth, ... letter of this sentence.'' This paper introduces some numerical analogues, such as: a(n) is taken to be the smallest…
Let Sym_n denote the symmetric group of all permutations pi = a_1...a_n of {1,...,n}. An index i is a peak of pi if a_{i-1} < a_i > a_{i+1} and we let P(pi) be the set of peaks of pi. Given any set S of positive integers we define P(S;n) to…
Sequence of positive integers $\{x_n\}_{n\geq1}$ is called similar to $\mathbb {N}$ respectively a given property $A$ if for every $n\geq1$ the numbers $x_n$ and $n$ are in the same class of equivalence respectively $A\enskip(x_n\sim n…
Normal approximations for descents and inversions of permutations of the set $\{1,2,...,n\}$ are well known. A number of sequences that occur in practice, such as the human genome and other genomes, contain many repeated elements. Motivated…
The \textit{order of appearance} $ z(n) $ of a positive integer $ n $ in the Fibonacci sequence is defined as the smallest positive integer $ j $ such that $ n $ divides the $ j $-th Fibonacci number. A \textit{fixed point} arises when, for…
Recall that a Stirling permutation is a permutation on the multiset $\{1,1,2,2,\ldots,n,n\}$ such that any numbers appearing between repeated values of $i$ must be greater than $i$. We call a Stirling permutation ``flattened'' if the…
We improve the lower bound on the number of permutations of {1,2,...,n} in which no 3-term arithmetic progression occurs as a subsequence, and derive lower bounds on the upper and lower densities of subsets of the positive integers that can…
Golomb's sequence is the unique nondecreasing sequence of positive integers in which each $n$ appears exactly $a(n)$ times. It satisfies the global self-referential rule \[ a\bigl(a(n)+a(n-1)+\cdots+a(1)\bigr)=n, \] grows smoothly like a…
For the sequence defined by a(n) = a(n-1) + gcd(n, a(n-1)) with a(1) = 7 we prove that a(n) - a(n-1) takes on only 1s and primes, making this recurrence a rare "naturally occurring" generator of primes. Toward a generalization of this…
Let $f(n)=\min_{p} |n-p|$, where $p$ is a prime. We show that there is a positive constant $\delta$ such that for any large integer $N$ there exist two positive integers $n_1$ and $n_2$ such that $N=n_1 + n_2$ and $f(n_i)\gg \ln N (\ln\ln…
Consider the following partial "sorting algorithm" on permutations: take the first entry of the permutation in one-line notation and insert it into the position of its own value. Continue until the first entry is 1. This process imposes a…
Consider n unit intervals, say [1,2], [3,4], ..., [2n-1,2n]. Identify their endpoints in pairs at random, with all (2n-1)!! = (2n-1) (2n-3) ... 3 1 pairings being equally likely. The result is a collection of cycles of various lengths, and…
We show that sequences of positive integers whose ratios $a_n^2/a_{n+1}$ lie within a specific range are almost uniquely determined by their reciprocal sums. For instance, the Sylvester sequence is uniquely characterized as the only…
For the sequence defined by \[ a(n) = \frac{n^2 - n - 1}{\gcd\big(n^2 - n - 1,\, b(n-3) + n\,b(n-4)\big)} \] Where $b(n) = (n+2)\big(b(n-1) - b(n-2)\big),$ with initial conditions $b(-1) = 0$ and $b(0) = 1$, we find that $a(n)$ contains…
The probability that a random permutation in $S_n$ is a derangement is well known to be $\displaystyle\sum\limits_{j=0}^n (-1)^j \frac{1}{j!}$. In this paper, we consider the conditional probability that the $(k+1)^{st}$ point is fixed,…
We obtain an explicit formula for the variance of the number of $k$-peaks in a uniformly random permutation. This is then used to obtain an asymptotic formula for the variance of the length of longest $k$-alternating subsequence in random…
We consider the structure of roller coaster permutations as introduced by Ahmed & Snevily[1]. A roller coaster permutation is described as a permuta- tion that maximizes the total switches from ascending to descending or visa versa for the…
The permutation language $P_n$ consists of all words that are permutations of a fixed alphabet of size $n$. Using divide-and-conquer, we construct a regular expression $R_n$ that specifies $P_n$. We then give explicit bounds for the length…
Let $A^{(n)}_{l;k}\subset S_n$ denote the event that the set of $l$ consecutive numbers $\{k,k+1,\cdots, k+l-1\}$ appear in a set of $l$ consecutive positions. Let $p=\{p_j\}_{j=1}^\infty$ be a distribution on $\mathbb{N}$ with $p_j>0$. Let…