Related papers: Variance vs. range for linear extensions, and bala…

We revisit classic balancing problems for linear extensions of a partially ordered set $P$, proving results that go far beyond many of the best earlier results on this topic. For example, with $p(x\prec y)$ the probability that $x$ precedes…

Let $(P,\leq)$ be a finite poset (partially ordered set), where $P$ has cardinality $n$. Consider linear extensions of $P$ as permutations $x_1x_2\cdots x_n$ in one-line notation. For distinct elements $x,y\in P$, we define…

The Kahn--Saks inequality is a classical result on the number of linear extensions of finite posets. We give a new proof of this inequality for posets of width two using explicit injections of lattice paths. As a consequence we obtain a…

Kahn and Kim (J. Comput. Sci., 1995) have shown that for a finite poset $P$, the entropy of the incomparability graph of $P$ (normalized by multiplying by the order of $P$) and the base-$2$ logarithm of the number of linear extensions of…

A balanced pair in a finite ordered set $P=(V,\leq)$ is a pair $(x,y)$ of elements of $V$ such that the proportion of linear extensions of $P$ that put $x$ before $y$ is in the real interval $[1/3, 2/3]$. We prove that every finite $N$-free…

A classical result of Kahn and Saks states that given any partially ordered set with two distinguished elements, the number of linear extensions in which the ranks of the distinguished elements differ by $k$ is log-concave as a function of…

After fixing a canonical ordering (or labeling) of the elements of a finite poset, one can associate each linear extension of the poset with a permutation. Some recent papers consider specific families of posets and ask how many linear…

A balanced pair in an ordered set $P=(V,\leq)$ is a pair $(x,y)$ of elements of $V$ such that the proportion of linear extensions of $P$ that put $x$ before $y$ is in the real interval $[1/3, 2/3]$. We define the notion of a good pair and…

For a finite poset $P=(X,\prec)$, let $\mathcal{L}_P$ denote the set of linear extensions of $P$. The sorting probability $\delta(P)$ is defined as \[\delta(P) \, := \, \min_{x,y\in X} \, \bigl| \mathbf{P} \, [L(x)\leq L(y) ] \ - \…

It has been known for more than 40 years that there are posets with planar cover graphs and arbitrarily large dimension. Recently, Streib and Trotter proved that such posets must have large height. In fact, all known constructions of such…

The cross--product conjecture (CPC) of Brightwell, Felsner and Trotter (1995) is a two-parameter quadratic inequality for the number of linear extensions of a poset $P= (X, \prec)$ with given value differences on three distinct elements in…

Graded posets frequently arise throughout combinatorics, where it is natural to try to count the number of elements of a fixed rank. These counting problems are often $\#\textbf{P}$-complete, so we consider approximation algorithms for…

We study the number of linear extensions of a partial order with a given proportion of comparable pairs of elements, and estimate the maximum and minimum possible numbers. We also consider a random interval partial order on $n$ elements,…

Neglecting many motivating details for the Park-Pham theorem (previously known as the Kahn-Kalai conjecture), the result starts with a finite set $X$, a non-trivial upper set $\mathcal{F} \subseteq 2^X$, and a particular parameterized…

Let P be a poset with elements 1,2,...,n. We say that P is sign-balanced if exactly half the linear extensions of P (regarded as permutations of 1,2,...,n) are even permutations, i.e., have an even number of inversions. This concept first…

A linear extension of a poset $P$ is a permutation of the elements of the set that respects the partial order. Let $L(P)$ denote the number of linear extensions. It is a #P complete problem to determine $L(P)$ exactly for an arbitrary…

We study a min-max relation conjectured by Saks and West: For any two posets $P$ and $Q$ the size of a maximum semiantichain and the size of a minimum unichain covering in the product $P\times Q$ are equal. For positive we state conditions…

Extending results of Linial (1984) and Aigner (1985), we prove a uniform lower bound on the balance constant of a poset $P$ of width $2$. This constant is defined as $\delta(P) = \max_{(x, y)\in P^2}\min\{\mathbb{P}(x\prec y),…

The dimension is a key measure of complexity of partially ordered sets. Small dimension allows succinct encoding. Indeed if $P$ has dimension $d$, then to know whether $x \leq y$ in $P$ it is enough to check whether $x\leq y$ in each of the…

Sign imbalance is a statistic on posets which counts the difference between the number of even and odd linear extensions. We prove complexity results about the sign imbalance and parity of linear extensions, focusing on the representative…