Some open problems on permutation patterns

This is a brief survey of some open problems on permutation patterns, with an emphasis on subjects not covered in the recent book by Kitaev, \emph{Patterns in Permutations and words}. I first survey recent developments on the enumeration and asymptotics of the pattern 1324, the last pattern of length 4 whose asymptotic growth is unknown, and related issues such as upper bounds for the number of avoiders of any pattern of length $k$ for any given $k$. Other subjects treated are the M\"obius function, topological properties and other algebraic aspects of the poset of permutations, ordered by containment, and also the study of growth rates of permutation classes, which are containment closed subsets of this poset.Comment: 20 pages. Related to upcoming talk at the British Combinatorial Conference 2013. To appear in London Mathematical Society Lecture Note Serie

Statistics on ordered partitions of sets

We introduce several statistics on ordered partitions of sets, that is, set partitions where the blocks are permuted arbitrarily. The distribution of these statistics is closely related to the q-Stirling numbers of the second kind. Some of the statistics are generalizations of known statistics on set partitions, but others are entirely new. All the new ones are sums of two statistics, inspired by statistics on permutations, where one of the two statistics is based on a certain partial ordering of the blocks of a partition.Comment: Added a Prologue, as this paper is soon to be published in a journa

The Möbius function of the permutation pattern Poset

A permutation \tau contains another permutation \sigma as a pattern if \tau has a subsequence whose elements are in the same order with respect to size as the elements in \sigma. This defines a partial order on the set of all permutations, and gives a graded poset P. We give a large class of pairs of permutations whose intervals in P have Mobius function 0. Also, we give a solution to the problem when \sigma occurs precisely once in \tau, and \sigma and \tau satisfy certain further conditions, in which case the Mobius function is shown to be either -1, 0 or 1. We conjecture that for intervals [\sigma,\tau] consisting of permutations avoiding the pattern 132, the magnitude of the Mobius function is bounded by the number of occurrences of \sigma in \tau. We also conjecture that the Mobius function of the interval [1,\tau] is -1, 0 or 1

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

The Coloring Ideal and Coloring Complex of a Graph

Let $G$ be a simple graph on $d$ vertices. We define a monomial ideal $K$ in the Stanley-Reisner ring $A$ of the order complex of the Boolean algebra on $d$ atoms. The monomials in $K$ are in one-to-one correspondence with the proper colorings of $G$. In particular, the Hilbert polynomial of $K$ equals the chromatic polynomial of $G$. The ideal $K$ is generated by square-free monomials, so $A/K$ is the Stanley-Reisner ring of a simplicial complex $C$. The $h$-vector of $C$ is a certain transformation of the tail $T(n)= n^d-k(n)$ of the chromatic polynomial $k$ of $G$. The combinatorial structure of the complex $C$ is described explicitly and it is shown that the Euler characteristic of $C$ equals the number of acyclic orientations of $G$.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figure

Random Walks and Mixed Volumes of Hypersimplices

Below is a method for relating a mixed volume computation for polytopes sharing many facet directions to a symmetric random walk. The example of permutahedra and particularly hypersimplices is expanded upon.Comment: 6 page

Decreasing subsequences in permutations and Wilf equivalence for involutions

In a recent paper, Backelin, West and Xin describe a map $\phi ^*$ that recursively replaces all occurrences of the pattern $k... 21$ in a permutation $\sigma$ by occurrences of the pattern $(k-1)... 21 k$. The resulting permutation $\phi^*(\sigma)$ contains no decreasing subsequence of length $k$. We prove that, rather unexpectedly, the map $\phi ^*$ commutes with taking the inverse of a permutation. In the BWX paper, the definition of $\phi^*$ is actually extended to full rook placements on a Ferrers board (the permutations correspond to square boards), and the construction of the map $\phi^*$ is the key step in proving the following result. Let $T$ be a set of patterns starting with the prefix $12... k$. Let $T'$ be the set of patterns obtained by replacing this prefix by $k... 21$ in every pattern of $T$. Then for all $n$, the number of permutations of the symmetric group \Sn_n that avoid $T$ equals the number of permutations of \Sn_n that avoid $T'$. Our commutation result, generalized to Ferrers boards, implies that the number of {\em involutions} of \Sn_n that avoid $T$ is equal to the number of involutions of \Sn_n avoiding $T'$, as recently conjectured by Jaggard

The M\"obius function of the consecutive pattern poset

An occurrence of a consecutive permutation pattern $p$ in a permutation $\pi$ is a segment of consecutive letters of $\pi$ whose values appear in the same order of size as the letters in $p$. The set of all permutations forms a poset with respect to such pattern containment. We compute the M\"obius function of intervals in this poset, providing what may be called a complete solution to the problem. For most intervals our results give an immediate answer to the question. In the remaining cases, we give a polynomial time algorithm to compute the M\"obius function. In particular, we show that the M\"obius function only takes the values -1, 0 and 1.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figure

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