Generalized permutation patterns - a short survey

An occurrence of a classical pattern p in a permutation π is a subsequence of π whose letters are in the same relative order (of size) as those in p. In an occurrence of a generalized pattern, some letters of that subsequence may be required to be adjacent in the permutation. Subsets of permutations characterized by the avoidance—or the prescribed number of occurrences— of generalized patterns exhibit connections to an enormous variety of other combinatorial structures, some of them apparently deep. We give a short overview of the state of the art for generalized patterns

Transition probabilities for general birth-death processes with applications in ecology, genetics, and evolution

A birth-death process is a continuous-time Markov chain that counts the number of particles in a system over time. In the general process with $n$ current particles, a new particle is born with instantaneous rate $\lambda_n$ and a particle dies with instantaneous rate $\mu_n$. Currently no robust and efficient method exists to evaluate the finite-time transition probabilities in a general birth-death process with arbitrary birth and death rates. In this paper, we first revisit the theory of continued fractions to obtain expressions for the Laplace transforms of these transition probabilities and make explicit an important derivation connecting transition probabilities and continued fractions. We then develop an efficient algorithm for computing these probabilities that analyzes the error associated with approximations in the method. We demonstrate that this error-controlled method agrees with known solutions and outperforms previous approaches to computing these probabilities. Finally, we apply our novel method to several important problems in ecology, evolution, and genetics

Restricted Motzkin permutations, Motzkin paths, continued fractions, and Chebyshev polynomials

We say that a permutation $\pi$ is a Motzkin permutation if it avoids 132 and there do not exist $a<b$ such that $\pi_a<\pi_b<\pi_{b+1}$. We study the distribution of several statistics in Motzkin permutations, including the length of the longest increasing and decreasing subsequences and the number of rises and descents. We also enumerate Motzkin permutations with additional restrictions, and study the distribution of occurrences of fairly general patterns in this class of permutations.Comment: 18 pages, 2 figure

Introduction to Partially Ordered Patterns

We review selected known results on partially ordered patterns (POPs) that include co-unimodal, multi- and shuffle patterns, peaks and valleys ((modified) maxima and minima) in permutations, the Horse permutations and others. We provide several (new) results on a class of POPs built on an arbitrary flat poset, obtaining, as corollaries, the bivariate generating function for the distribution of peaks (valleys) in permutations, links to Catalan, Narayna, and Pell numbers, as well as generalizations of few results in the literature including the descent distribution. Moreover, we discuss q-analogue for a result on non-overlapping segmented POPs. Finally, we suggest several open problems for further research.Comment: 23 pages; Discrete Applied Mathematics, to appea

Generalized permutation patterns -- a short survey

An occurrence of a classical pattern p in a permutation \pi is a subsequence of \pi whose letters are in the same relative order (of size) as those in p. In an occurrence of a generalized pattern, some letters of that subsequence may be required to be adjacent in the permutation. Subsets of permutations characterized by the avoidance--or the prescribed number of occurrences--of generalized patterns exhibit connections to an enormous variety of other combinatorial structures, some of them apparently deep. We give a short overview of the state of the art for generalized patterns.Comment: 11 pages. Added a section on asymptotics (Section 8), added more examples of barred patterns equal to generalized patterns (Section 7) and made a few other minor additions. To appear in ``Permutation Patterns, St Andrews 2007'', S.A. Linton, N. Ruskuc, V. Vatter (eds.), LMS Lecture Note Series, Cambridge University Pres

On rational approximation of algebraic functions

We construct a new scheme of approximation of any multivalued algebraic function $f(z)$ by a sequence $\{r_{n}(z)\}_{n\in \mathbb{N}}$ of rational functions. The latter sequence is generated by a recurrence relation which is completely determined by the algebraic equation satisfied by $f(z)$. Compared to the usual Pad\'e approximation our scheme has a number of advantages, such as simple computational procedures that allow us to prove natural analogs of the Pad\'e Conjecture and Nuttall's Conjecture for the sequence $\{r_{n}(z)\}_{n\in \mathbb{N}}$ in the complement \mathbb{CP}^1\setminus \D_{f}, where \D_{f} is the union of a finite number of segments of real algebraic curves and finitely many isolated points. In particular, our construction makes it possible to control the behavior of spurious poles and to describe the asymptotic ratio distribution of the family $\{r_{n}(z)\}_{n\in \mathbb{N}}$. As an application we settle the so-called 3-conjecture of Egecioglu {\em et al} dealing with a 4-term recursion related to a polynomial Riemann Hypothesis.Comment: 25 pages, 8 figures, LaTeX2e, revised version to appear in Advances in Mathematic