Avoiding three consecutive blocks of the same size and same sum

We show that there exists an infinite word over the alphabet {0,1,3,4} containing no three consecutive blocks of the same size and the same sum. This answers an open problem of Pirillo and Varricchio from1994

Lattice Paths and Pattern-Avoiding Uniquely Sorted Permutations

Defant, Engen, and Miller defined a permutation to be uniquely sorted if it has exactly one preimage under West's stack-sorting map. We enumerate classes of uniquely sorted permutations that avoid a pattern of length three and a pattern of length four by establishing bijections between these classes and various lattice paths. This allows us to prove nine conjectures of Defant.Comment: 18 pages, 16 figures, new version with updated abstract and reference

Van der Waerden's Theorem and Avoidability in Words

Pirillo and Varricchio, and independently, Halbeisen and Hungerbuhler considered the following problem, open since 1994: Does there exist an infinite word w over a finite subset of Z such that w contains no two consecutive blocks of the same length and sum? We consider some variations on this problem in the light of van der Waerden's theorem on arithmetic progressions.Comment: Co-author added; new result

On Multiple Pattern Avoiding Set Partitions

We study classes of set partitions determined by the avoidance of multiple patterns, applying a natural notion of partition containment that has been introduced by Sagan. We say that two sets S and T of patterns are equivalent if for each n, the number of partitions of size n avoiding all the members of S is the same as the number of those that avoid all the members of T. Our goal is to classify the equivalence classes among two-element pattern sets of several general types. First, we focus on pairs of patterns {\sigma,\tau}, where \sigma\ is a pattern of size three with at least two distinct symbols and \tau\ is an arbitrary pattern of size k that avoids \sigma. We show that pattern-pairs of this type determine a small number of equivalence classes; in particular, the classes have on average exponential size in k. We provide a (sub-exponential) upper bound for the number of equivalence classes, and provide an explicit formula for the generating function of all such avoidance classes, showing that in all cases this generating function is rational. Next, we study partitions avoiding a pair of patterns of the form {1212,\tau}, where \tau\ is an arbitrary pattern. Note that partitions avoiding 1212 are exactly the non-crossing partitions. We provide several general equivalence criteria for pattern pairs of this type, and show that these criteria account for all the equivalences observed when \tau\ has size at most six. In the last part of the paper, we perform a full classification of the equivalence classes of all the pairs {\sigma,\tau}, where \sigma\ and \tau\ have size four.Comment: 37 pages. Corrected a typ

Clusters, generating functions and asymptotics for consecutive patterns in permutations

We use the cluster method to enumerate permutations avoiding consecutive patterns. We reprove and generalize in a unified way several known results and obtain new ones, including some patterns of length 4 and 5, as well as some infinite families of patterns of a given shape. By enumerating linear extensions of certain posets, we find a differential equation satisfied by the inverse of the exponential generating function counting occurrences of the pattern. We prove that for a large class of patterns, this inverse is always an entire function. We also complete the classification of consecutive patterns of length up to 6 into equivalence classes, proving a conjecture of Nakamura. Finally, we show that the monotone pattern asymptotically dominates (in the sense that it is easiest to avoid) all non-overlapping patterns of the same length, thus proving a conjecture of Elizalde and Noy for a positive fraction of all patterns