Related papers: Counting scattered palindromes in a finite word
For an undirected tree with $n$ edges labelled by single letters, we consider its substrings, which are labels of the simple paths between pairs of nodes. We prove that there are $O(n^{1.5})$ different palindromic substrings. This solves an…
Let (F_n^{(k)})_{n\geq -(k-2)} be the k-generalized Fibonacci sequence, defined as the linear recurrence sequence whose first k terms are \(0, 0, \ldots, 0, 1\), and whose subsequent terms are determined by the sum of the preceding k terms.…
We present a method for the enumeration of restricted words over a finite alphabet. Restrictions are described through the inclusion or exclusion of suitable building blocks used to construct the words by concatenation. Our approach, which…
Given two random finite sequences from $[k]^n$ such that a prefix of the first sequence is a suffix of the second, we examine the length of their longest common subsequence. If $\ell$ is the length of the overlap, we prove that the expected…
For any finite field $\mathbb{F}$ and any positive integer $n$ we count the number of monic polynomials of degree $n$ over $\mathbb{F}$ with nonzero constant coefficient and a self-reciprocal factor of any specified degree. An application…
We find finite-state recurrences to enumerate the words on the alphabet $[n]^r$ which avoid the patterns 123 and $1k(k-1)\dots2$, and, separately, the words which avoid the patterns 1234 and $1k(k-1)\dots2$.
Given a word $w$, what is the maximum possible number of appearances of $w$ reading contiguously along any of the directions in $\{-1, 0, 1\}^d \setminus \{\mathbf{0}\}$ in a large $d$-dimensional grid (as in a word search)? Patchell and…
A sequence of geometric random variables of length $n$ is a sequence of $n$ independent and identically distributed geometric random variables ($\Gamma_1, \Gamma_2, \dots, \Gamma_n$) where $\mathbb{P}(\Gamma_j=i)=pq^{i-1}$ for…
This note is an attempt to attack a conjecture of Fraenkel and Simpson stated in 1998 concerning the number of distinct squares in a finite word. By counting the number of (right-)special factors, we give an upper bound of the number of…
By replacing the letters to polynomials in F_2[t], an infinite word, over a finite alphabet, can be seen as the sequence of partial quotients of a continued fraction in F_2((1/t)). Here is described a family of such infinite words,…
We develop a new tool, namely polynomial and linear algebraic methods, for studying systems of word equations. We illustrate its usefulness by giving essentially simpler proofs of several hard problems. At the same time we prove extensions…
We consider the set of finite random words $\mathcal A^\star$, with independent letters drawn from a finite or infinite totally ordered alphabet according to a general probability distribution. On a specific subset of $\mathcal A^\star$,…
The rank of a scattered $\mathbb{F}_q$-linear set of $\mathrm{PG}(r-1,q^n)$, $rn$ even, is at most $rn/2$ as it was proved by Blokhuis and Lavrauw. Existence results and explicit constructions were given for infinitely many values of $r$,…
Let S be a finite set of words over an alphabet Sigma. The set S is said to be complete if every word w over the alphabet Sigma is a factor of some element of S*, i.e. w belongs to Fact(S*). Otherwise if S is not complete, we are interested…
We further explore the notion of Ulam words considered by Bade, Cui, Labelle, and Li, giving some lower bounds on how many there are of a given length. Gaps between words and words of special type also reveal remarkable structure. By…
We investigate the order of the $r$-th, $1\le r < +\infty$, central moment of the length of the longest common subsequence of two independent random words of size $n$ whose letters are identically distributed and independently drawn from a…
If $x$ is a non-empty string then the repetition $xx$ is called a tandem repeat. Similarly, a tandem in a two dimensional array $X$ is a configuration consisting of a same primitive block $W$ that touch each other with one side or corner.…
Given a nonempty finite word $v$, let $PL(v)$ be the palindromic length of $v$; it means the minimal number of palindromes whose concatenation is equal to $v$. Let $v^R$ denote the reversal of $v$. Given a finite or infinite word $y$, let…
Improved upper and lower bounds on the number of square-free ternary words are obtained. The upper bound is based on the enumeration of square-free ternary words up to length 110. The lower bound is derived by constructing generalised…
We present a quite curious generalization of multi-step Fibonacci numbers. For any positive rational $q$, we enumerate binary words of length $n$ whose maximal factors of the form $0^a1^b$ satisfy $a = 0$ or $aq > b$. When $q$ is an integer…