English

Linear Recurrences from Counting Schreier-Type Multisets

Combinatorics 2025-09-08 v1

Abstract

A nonempty set FF is Schreier if minFF\min F\ge |F|. Bird observed that counting Schreier sets in a certain way produces the Fibonacci sequence. Since then, various connections between variants of Schreier sets and well-known sequences have been discovered. Building on these works, we prove a linear recurrence for the sequence that counts multisets FF with minFpF\min F\ge p|F|. In particular, if we let Ap,n(s) := {F{1,,1s,,n1,,n1s,n}:nF\mboxandminFpF},\mathcal{A}^{(s)}_{p, n}\ :=\ \{F\subset \{\underbrace{1, \ldots, 1}_{s}, \ldots, \underbrace{n-1, \ldots, n-1}_{s}, n\}\,:\,n\in F\mbox{ and }\min F\ge p|F|\}, then Ap,n(s)=i=0sAp,n1ip(s).|\mathcal{A}^{(s)}_{p, n}| = \sum_{i=0}^s|\mathcal{A}^{(s)}_{p, n-1-ip}|. If we color ss copies of the same integer by different colors from 11 to ss, i.e., Bp,n(s):=\mathcal{B}^{(s)}_{p, n}:= {F{11,,1s,,(n1)1,,(n1)s,n}:nF\mboxandminFpF},\{F\subset \{1_{1}, \ldots, 1_{s}, \ldots, (n-1)_1, \ldots, (n-1)_{s}, n\}\,:\,n\in F\mbox{ and }\min F\ge p|F|\}, then Bp,n(s)=i=0s(si)Bp,n1ip(s).|\mathcal{B}^{(s)}_{p, n}| = \sum_{i=0}^s \binom{s}{i}| \mathcal{B}^{(s)}_{p, n-1-ip}|. Lastly, we count Schreier sets that do not admit multiples of a given integer u2u\ge 2 and witness linear recurrences whose coefficients are drawn from the uuth row of the Pascal triangle and have alternating signs, except possibly the last one.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2509.05158,
  title  = {Linear Recurrences from Counting Schreier-Type Multisets},
  author = {Hung Viet Chu and Yubo Geng and Julian King and Steven J. Miller and Garrett Tresch and Zachary Louis Vasseur},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2509.05158},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

22 pages, 3 tables

R2 v1 2026-07-01T05:23:14.998Z