Related papers: Circular sorting, strong complete mappings and wre…
We consider the problem of upper bounding the number of circular transpositions needed to sort a permutation. It is well known that any permutation can be sorted using at most $n(n-1)/2$ adjacent transpositions. We show that, if we allow…
We determine the maximal number of steps required to sort $n$ labeled points on a circle by adjacent swaps. Lower bounds for sorting by all swaps, not necessarily adjacent, are given as well.
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 use an interesting result of probabilistic flavor concerning the product of two permutations consisting of one cycle each to find an explicit formula for the average number of block interchanges needed to sort a permutation of length…
We consider the problem of determining the maximum number of moves required to sort a permutation of $[n]$ using cut-and-paste operations, in which a segment is cut out and then pasted into the remaining string, possibly reversed. We give…
We prove a lower and an upper bound on the number of block moves necessary to sort a permutation. We put our results in contrast with existing results on sorting by block transpositions, and raise some open questions.
We establish upper and lower bounds on the maximal number of steps needed to transform a cyclic permutation to the canonical cyclic permutation using conjugation by adjacent transpositions, and on the diameter of the underlying Schreier…
Recall that an excedance of a permutation $\pi$ is any position $i$ such that $\pi_i > i$. Inspired by the work of Hopkins, McConville and Propp (Elec. J. Comb., 2017) on sorting using toppling, we say that a permutation is toppleable if it…
Let $G$ be a graph on $n$ vertices, labeled $v_1,\ldots,v_n$ and $\pi$ be a permutation on $[n]:=\{1,2,\cdots, n\}$. Suppose that each pebble $p_i$ is placed at vertex $v_{\pi(i)}$ and has destination $v_i$. During each step, a disjoint set…
A general explicit upper bound is obtained for the proportion $P(n,m)$ of elements of order dividing $m$, where $n-1 \le m \le cn$ for some constant $c$, in the finite symmetric group $S_n$. This is used to find lower bounds for the…
For a graph with edge ordering, a linear order on the edge set, we obtain a permutation of vertices by considering the edges as transpositions of endvertices. It is known from D\'enes' results that the permutation of a tree is a full cyclic…
The set of all permutations with $n$ symbols is a symmetric group denoted by $S_n$. A transposition tree, $T$, is a spanning tree over its $n$ vertices $V_T=${$1, 2, 3, \ldots n$} where the vertices are the positions of a permutation $\pi$…
Using existing classification results for the 7- and 8-cycles in the pancake graph, we determine the number of permutations that require 4 pancake flips (prefix reversals) to be sorted. A similar characterization of the 8-cycles in the…
A permutation $\pi$ over alphabet $\Sigma = {1,2,3,\ldots,n}$, is a sequence where every element $x$ in $\Sigma$ occurs exactly once. $S_n$ is the symmetric group consisting of all permutations of length $n$ defined over $\Sigma$. $I_n$ =…
In sorting situations where the final destination of each item is known, it is natural to repeatedly choose items and place them where they belong, allowing the intervening items to shift by one to make room. (In fact, a special case of…
A number of fields, including the study of genome rearrangements and the design of interconnection networks, deal with the connected problems of sorting permutations in "as few moves as possible", using a given set of allowed operations, or…
We study sorting by queues that can rearrange their content by applying permutations from a predefined set. These new sorting devices are called shuffle queues and we investigate those of them corresponding to sets of permutations defining…
Inspired by a common technique for shuffling a deck of cards on a table without riffling, we formalize the pile shuffle and investigate its capabilities as a sorting device. Our study is novel in that we consider pile shuffle in three…
In this paper we investigate some new problems in additive combinatorics. Our problems mainly involve permutations (or circular permutations) $n$ distinct numbers (or elements of an additive abelian group) $a_1,\ldots,a_n$ with adjacent…
There is a growing interest in studying the distribution of certain labels in products of permutations since the work of Stanley addressing a conjecture of B\'{o}na. This paper is concerned with a problem in that direction. Let $D$ be a…