Ranking Functions for Size-Change Termination II

Size-Change Termination is an increasingly-popular technique for verifying program termination. These termination proofs are deduced from an abstract representation of the program in the form of "size-change graphs". We present algorithms that, for certain classes of size-change graphs, deduce a global ranking function: an expression that ranks program states, and decreases on every transition. A ranking function serves as a witness for a termination proof, and is therefore interesting for program certification. The particular form of the ranking expressions that represent SCT termination proofs sheds light on the scope of the proof method. The complexity of the expressions is also interesting, both practicaly and theoretically. While deducing ranking functions from size-change graphs has already been shown possible, the constructions in this paper are simpler and more transparent than previously known. They improve the upper bound on the size of the ranking expression from triply exponential down to singly exponential (for certain classes of instances). We claim that this result is, in some sense, optimal. To this end, we introduce a framework for lower bounds on the complexity of ranking expressions and prove exponential lower bounds.Comment: 29 pages

The combinatorics of biased riffle shuffles

This paper studies biased riffle shuffles, first defined by Diaconis, Fill, and Pitman. These shuffles generalize the well-studied Gilbert-Shannon-Reeds shuffle and convolve nicely. An upper bound is given for the time for these shuffles to converge to the uniform distribution; this matches lower bounds of Lalley. A careful version of a bijection of Gessel leads to a generating function for cycle structure after one of these shuffles and gives new results about descents in random permutations. Results are also obtained about the inversion and descent structure of a permutation after one of these shuffles.Comment: 11 page