English

Mean and variance of the longest alternating subsequence in a random separable permutation

Probability 2023-10-31 v2 Combinatorics

Abstract

A permutation is \it separable \rm if it can be obtained from the singleton permutation by iterating direct sums and skew sums. Equivalently, it is separable if and only it avoids the patterns 2413 and 3142. Under the uniform probability on separable permutations of [n][n], let the random variable AnA_n denote the length of the longest alternating subsequence. Also, let An+,A_n^{+,-} denote the length of the longest alternating subsequence that begins with an ascent and ends with a descent, and define An,+,An+,+,An,A_n^{-,+}, A_n^{+,+}, A_n^{-,-} similarly. By symmetry, the first two and the last two of these latter four random variables are equi-distributed. We prove that the expected value of any of these five random variables behaves asymptotically as (22)n0.5858n(2-\sqrt2)n\approx0.5858\thinspace n. We also prove that the variance of any of the four random variables An±,±A_n^{\pm,\pm} behaves asymptotically as 161122n0.2218n\frac{16-11\sqrt2}2n\approx0.2218\thinspace n.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2310.08664,
  title  = {Mean and variance of the longest alternating subsequence in a random separable permutation},
  author = {Ross G. Pinsky},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2310.08664},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

An additional result was added to the paper. Also, a few typos were corrected

R2 v1 2026-06-28T12:49:12.887Z