Related papers: Tower-type bounds for unavoidable patterns in word…
We introduce a new combinatorial object called tower diagrams and prove fundamental properties of these objects. We also introduce an algorithm that allows us to slide words to tower diagrams. We show that the algorithm is well-defined only…
Let Ck(n, q) be the p-ary linear code defined by the incidence matrix of points and k-spaces in PG(n, q), q = p^h, p prime, h >= 1. In this pa- per, we show that there are no codewords of weight in the open interval ] q^{k+1}-1/q-1, 2q^k[…
The factor complexity function $C_w(n)$ of a finite or infinite word $w$ counts the number of distinct factors of $w$ of length $n$ for each $n \ge 0$. A finite word $w$ of length $|w|$ is said to be trapezoidal if the graph of its factor…
Given a finite word u, we define its palindromic length |u|_{pal} to be the least number n such that u=v_1v_2... v_n with each v_i a palindrome. We address the following open question: Does there exist an infinite non ultimately periodic…
Every rational number p/q defines a rational base numeration system in which every integer has a unique finite representation, up to leading zeroes. This work is a contribution to the study of the set of the representations of integers.…
According to Zipf's meaning-frequency law, words that are more frequent tend to have more meanings. Here it is shown that a linear dependency between the frequency of a form and its number of meanings is found in a family of models of…
A permutation $\sigma \in S_n$ is a $k$-superpattern (or $k$-universal) if it contains each $\tau \in S_k$ as a pattern. This notion of "superpatterns" can be generalized to words on smaller alphabets, and several questions about…
We define a quantity $c_m(n,k)$ as a generalization of the notion of the composition of the positive integer $n$ into $k$ parts. We proceed to derive some known properties of this quantity. In particular, we relate two partial Bell…
We consider a generalisation of a conjecture by Patterson and Wiedemann from 1983 on the Hamming distance of a function from $\mathbb{F}_q^n$ to $\mathbb{F}_q$ to the set of affine functions from $\mathbb{F}_q^n$ to $\mathbb{F}_q$. We prove…
In this paper we prove Chaitin's ``heuristic principle'', {\it the theorems of a finitely-specified theory cannot be significantly more complex than the theory itself}, for an appropriate measure of complexity. We show that the measure is…
We exhibit subshifts admitting weakly mixing (probability) measures, for arbitrary $\epsilon > 0$, with word complexity $p$ satisfying $\limsup \frac{p(q)}{q} < 1.5 + \epsilon$. For arbitrary $f(q) \to \infty$, said subshifts can be made to…
String matching is one of the most fundamental problems in computer science. A natural problem is to determine the number of characters that need to be queried (i.e. the decision tree complexity) in a string in order to decide whether this…
We study the maximum multiplicity $\mathcal{M}(k,n)$ of a simple transposition $s_k=(k \: k+1)$ in a reduced word for the longest permutation $w_0=n \: n-1 \: \cdots \: 2 \: 1$, a problem closely related to much previous work on sorting…
We consider the Consensus Patterns problem, where, given a set of input strings, one is asked to extract a long-enough pattern which appears (with some errors) in all strings. We prove that this problem is W[1]-hard when parameterized by…
A square is the concatenation of a nonempty word with itself. A word has period p if its letters at distance p match. The exponent of a nonempty word is the quotient of its length over its smallest period. In this article we give a proof of…
A reconstruction problem of words from scattered factors asks for the minimal information, like multisets of scattered factors of a given length or the number of occurrences of scattered factors from a given set, necessary to uniquely…
We find generating functions for the number of words avoiding certain patterns or sets of patterns on at most 2 distinct letters and determine which of them are equally avoided. We also find the exact number of words avoiding certain…
Examples are constructed of sparse subsequences of the integers for which the associated maximal averages operator is of weak type (1,1). A consequence, by transference, is that an almost everywhere L^1 -- type ergodic theorem holds for…
We show that for any permutation $\pi$ there exists an integer $k_{\pi}$ such that every permutation avoiding $\pi$ as a pattern is a product of at most $k_{\pi}$ separable permutations. In other words, every strict class $\mathcal C$ of…
We show that it is provable in PA that there is an arithmetically definable sequence $\{\phi_{n}:n \in \omega\}$ of $\Pi^{0}_{2}$-sentences, such that - PRA+$\{\phi_{n}:n \in \omega\}$ is $\Pi^{0}_{2}$-sound and $\Pi^{0}_{1}$-complete - the…