English

Self-describing sequences and the Catalan family tree

Combinatorics 2007-05-23 v1

Abstract

We introduce a transformation of finite integer sequences, show that every sequence eventually stabilizes under this transformation and that the number of fixed points is counted by the Catalan numbers. The sequences that are fixed are precisely those that describe themselves -- every term tt is equal to the number of previous terms that are smaller than tt. In addition, we provide an easy way to enumerate all these self-describing sequences by organizing them in a Catalan tree with a specific labelling system.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.math/0305319,
  title  = {Self-describing sequences and the Catalan family tree},
  author = {Zoran Sunik},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:math/0305319},
  year   = {2007}
}

Comments

9 pages, 2 figures. submitted to Electronic Journal of Combinatorics

R2 v1 2026-07-22T16:54:46.970Z