English

Counting records in a random, non-uniform, permutation

Combinatorics 2025-01-14 v1

Abstract

Counting permutations of [n][n] by the number of records, i.e. left-to-right maxima, is a classic problem in combinatorial enumeration. In the first volume of ``The Art of Computer Programming", Donald Knuth demonstrated its relevance for analysis of average case complexity of a basic algorithm for determining a maximum in a linear list of numbers. It is well known that the expected, and likely, number of those records in a {\it uniformly\/} random permutation is asymptotic to logn\log n. Cyril Banderier, Rene Beier, and Kurt Mehlhorn studied the case of a non-uniform random permutation, which is obtained from a generic permutation of [n][n] by selecting its elements one after another independently with probability pp, and permuting the selected elements uniformly at random. They proved that En(p)E_n(p), the largest expected number of the maxima, is between constn/p\text{const}\sqrt{n/p} and O((n/p)logn)O\bigl(\sqrt{(n/p)\log n}\bigr) if pp is fixed. For p1/np\gg 1/n and simultaneously 1pconst n1/2logn1-p\ge \text{const }n^{-1/2}\log n, we prove that En(p)E_n(p) is exactly of order (1p)n/p(1-p)\sqrt{n/p}.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2501.06905,
  title  = {Counting records in a random, non-uniform, permutation},
  author = {Boris Pittel},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2501.06905},
  year   = {2025}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-28T21:04:02.288Z