Revstack sort, zigzag patterns, descent polynomials of tt-revstack sortable permutations, and Steingr\'imsson's sorting conjecture

In this paper we examine the sorting operator $T(LnR)=T(R)T(L)n$. Applying this operator to a permutation is equivalent to passing the permutation reversed through a stack. We prove theorems that characterise $t$-revstack sortability in terms of patterns in a permutation that we call $zigzag$ patterns. Using these theorems we characterise those permutations of length $n$ which are sorted by $t$ applications of $T$ for $t=0,1,2,n-3,n-2,n-1$. We derive expressions for the descent polynomials of these six classes of permutations and use this information to prove Steingr\'imsson's sorting conjecture for those six values of $t$. Symmetry and unimodality of the descent polynomials for general $t$-revstack sortable permutations is also proven and three conjectures are given

Ascent sequences and upper triangular matrices containing non-negative integers

This paper presents a bijection between ascent sequences and upper triangular matrices whose non-negative entries are such that all rows and columns contain at least one non-zero entry. We show the equivalence of several natural statistics on these structures under this bijection and prove that some of these statistics are equidistributed. Several special classes of matrices are shown to have simple formulations in terms of ascent sequences. Binary matrices are shown to correspond to ascent sequences with no two adjacent entries the same. Bidiagonal matrices are shown to be related to order-consecutive set partitions and a simple condition on the ascent sequences generate this class.Comment: 13 page

The area above the Dyck path of a permutation

In this paper we study a mapping from permutations to Dyck paths. A Dyck path gives rise to a (Young) diagram and we give relationships between statistics on permutations and statistics on their corresponding diagrams. The distribution of the size of this diagram is discussed and a generalisation given of a parity result due to Simion and Schmidt. We propose a filling of the diagram which determines the permutation uniquely. Diagram containment on a restricted class of permutations is shown to be related to the strong Bruhat poset.Comment: 9 page

Permutations sortable by n-4 passes through a stack

We characterise and enumerate permutations that are sortable by n-4 passes through a stack. We conjecture the number of permutations sortable by n-5 passes, and also the form of a formula for the general case n-k, which involves a polynomial expression.Comment: 6 page

An Ising model having permutation spin motivated by a permutation complexity measure

In this paper we define a variant of the Ising model in which spins are replaced with permutations. The energy between two spins is a function of the relative disorder of one spin, a permutation, to the other. This model is motivated by a complexity measure for declarative systems. For such systems a state is a permutation and the permutation sorting complexity measures the average sequential disorder of neighbouring states. To measure the relative disorder between two spins we use a symmetrized version of the descent permutation statistic that has appeared in the works of Chatterjee \& Diaconis and Petersen. The classical Ising model corresponds to the length-2 permutation case of this new model. We consider and prove some elementary properties for the 1D case of this model in which spins are length-3 permutations.Comment: Dedicated to Einar Steingr\'imsson on the occasion of his retirement. 15 pages, 2 figure

The Federal Disaster Assistance Policy -- a declarative analysis

In this paper we will provide a quantitative analysis of the Federal Disaster Assistance policy from the viewpoint of three different stakeholders. This quantitative methodology is new and has applications to other areas such as business and healthcare processes. The stakeholders are interested in process transparency but each has a different opinion on precisely what constitutes transparency. We will also consider three modifications to the Federal Disaster Assistance policy and analyse, from a stakeholder viewpoint, how stakeholder satisfaction changes from process to process. This analysis is used to rank the favourability of four policies with respect to all collective stakeholder preferences

Generalized ballot sequences are ascent sequences

Ascent sequences were introduced by the author (in conjunction with others) to encode a class of permutations that avoid a single length- three bivincular pattern, and were the central object through which other combinatorial correspondences were discovered. In this note we prove the non-trivial fact that generalized ballot sequences are ascent sequences

Enumerating (2+2)-free posets by indistinguishable elements

A poset is said to be (2+2)-free if it does not contain an induced subposet that is isomorphic to 2+2, the union of two disjoint 2-element chains. Two elements in a poset are indistinguishable if they have the same strict up-set and the same strict down-set. Being indistinguishable defines an equivalence relation on the elements of the poset. We introduce the statistic maxindist, the maximum size of a set of indistinguishable elements. We show that, under a bijection of Bousquet-Melou et al., indistinguishable elements correspond to letters that belong to the same run in the so-called ascent sequence corresponding to the poset. We derive the generating function for the number of (2+2)-free posets with respect to both maxindist and the number of different strict down-sets of elements in the poset. Moreover, we show that (2+2)-free posets P with maxindist(P) at most k are in bijection with upper triangular matrices of nonnegative integers not exceeding k, where each row and each column contains a nonzero entry. (Here we consider isomorphic posets to be equal.) In particular, (2+2)-free posets P on n elements with maxindist(P)=1 correspond to upper triangular binary matrices where each row and column contains a nonzero entry, and whose entries sum to n. We derive a generating function counting such matrices, which confirms a conjecture of Jovovic, and we refine the generating function to count upper triangular matrices consisting of nonnegative integers not exceeding k and having a nonzero entry in each row and column. That refined generating function also enumerates (2+2)-free posets according to maxindist. Finally, we link our enumerative results to certain restricted permutations and matrices.Comment: 16 page