Related papers: Lower Bounds on Davenport-Schinzel Sequences via R…

One of the longest-standing open problems in computational geometry is to bound the lower envelope of $n$ univariate functions, each pair of which crosses at most $s$ times, for some fixed $s$. This problem is known to be equivalent to…

Let lambda_s(n) denote the maximum length of a Davenport-Schinzel sequence of order s on n symbols. For s=3 it is known that lambda_3(n) = Theta(n alpha(n)) (Hart and Sharir, 1986). For general s>=4 there are almost-tight upper and lower…

A generalized Davenport-Schinzel sequence is one over a finite alphabet that contains no subsequences isomorphic to a fixed forbidden subsequence. One of the fundamental problems in this area is bounding (asymptotically) the maximum length…

Generalized Davenport-Schinzel sequences are sequences that avoid a forbidden subsequence and have a sparsity requirement on their letters. Upper bounds on the lengths of generalized Davenport-Schinzel sequences have been applied to a…

We present new, and mostly sharp, bounds on the maximum length of certain generalizations of Davenport-Schinzel sequences. Among the results are sharp bounds on order-$s$ {\em double DS} sequences, for all $s$, sharp bounds on sequences…

For any sequence $u$, the extremal function $Ex(u, j, n)$ is the maximum possible length of a $j$-sparse sequence with $n$ distinct letters that avoids $u$. We prove that if $u$ is an alternating sequence $a b a b \dots$ of length $s$, then…

The Zarankiewicz problem asks for an estimate on $z(m, n; s, t)$, the largest number of $1$'s in an $m \times n$ matrix with all entries $0$ or $1$ containing no $s \times t$ submatrix consisting entirely of $1$'s. We show that a classical…

Let $up(r, t) = (a_1 a_2 \dots a_r)^t$. We investigate the problem of determining the maximum possible integer $n(r, t)$ for which there exist $2t-1$ permutations $\pi_1, \pi_2, \dots, \pi_{2t-1}$ of $1, 2, \dots, n(r, t)$ such that the…

Let $(s_2(n))_{n=0}^\infty$ denote Stern's diatomic sequence. For $n\geq 2$, we may view $s_2(n)$ as the number of partitions of $n-1$ into powers of $2$ with each part occurring at most twice. More generally, for integers $b,n\geq 2$, let…

Let $s(n)$ be the number of different remainders $n \bmod k$, where $1 \leq k \leq \lfloor n/2 \rfloor$. This rather natural sequence is sequence A283190 in the OEIS and while some basic facts are known, it seems that surprisingly it has…

Given positive integers m,n,s,t, let z(m,n,s,t) be the maximum number of ones in a (0,1) matrix of size m-by-n that does not contain an all ones submatrix of size s-by-t. We find a flexible upper bound on z(m,n,s,t) that implies the known…

Motivated by computing duplication patterns in sequences, a new fundamental problem called the longest subsequence-repeated subsequence (LSRS) is proposed. Given a sequence $S$ of length $n$, a letter-repeated subsequence is a subsequence…

Consider a face F in an arrangement of n Jordan curves in the plane, no two of which intersect more than s times. We prove that the combinatorial complexity of F is O(\lambda_s(n)), O(\lambda_{s+1}(n)), and O(\lambda_{s+2}(n)), when the…

An $(r, s)$-formation is a concatenation of $s$ permutations of $r$ letters. If $u$ is a sequence with $r$ distinct letters, then let $\mathit{Ex}(u, n)$ be the maximum length of any $r$-sparse sequence with $n$ distinct letters which has…

We study the problem of computing a longest increasing subsequence in a sequence $S$ of $n$ distinct elements in the presence of persistent comparison errors. In this model, every comparison between two elements can return the wrong result…

We prove a number of results related to a problem of Po-Shen Loh, which is equivalent to a problem in Ramsey theory. Let $a=(a_1,a_2,a_3)$ and $b=(b_1,b_2,b_3)$ be two triples of integers. Define $a$ to be 2-less than $b$ if $a_i<b_i$ for…

For positive integers $s,t,m$ and $n$, the Zarankiewicz number $z(m,n;s,t)$ is the maximum number of edges in a subgraph of $K_{m,n}$ that has no complete bipartite subgraph containing $s$ vertices in the part of size $m$ and $t$ vertices…

The classical Zarankiewicz problem, which concerns the maximum number of edges in a bipartite graph without a forbidden complete bipartite subgraph, motivates a direct analogue for hypergraphs. Let $K_{s_1,\ldots, s_r}$ be the complete…

We prove that for certain families of semi-algebraic convex bodies in 3 dimensions, the convex hull of $n$ disjoint bodies has $O(n\lambda_s(n))$ features, where $s$ is a constant depending on the family: $\lambda_s(n)$ is the maximum…

We prove that the pigeonhole upper bound $\lambda(s,m) \leq \binom{m}{2}(s+1)$ is asymptotically tight whenever $s/\!\sqrt{m} \to \infty$. In particular, $\lambda(s,m) \sim \binom{m}{2}\,s$ in this regime. As corollaries: $\lambda(n,n)/n^3…