Roots of Polynomials and The Derangement Problem
Number Theory
2019-12-03 v1 Probability
Abstract
We present a new killing-a-fly-with-a-sledgehammer proof of one of the oldest results in probability which says that the probability that a random permutation on elements has no fixed points tends to as tends to infinity. Our proof stems from the connection between permutations and polynomials over finite fields and is based on an independence argument, which is trivial in the polynomial world.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1802.01977,
title = {Roots of Polynomials and The Derangement Problem},
author = {Lior Bary-Soroker and Ofir Gorodetsky},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1802.01977},
year = {2019}
}
Comments
Accepted to American Mathematical Monthly