Reciprocals of exponential polynomials and permutation enumeration

We show that the reciprocal of a partial sum with 2m terms of the alternating exponential series is the exponential generating function for permutations in which every increasing run has length congruent to 0 or 1 modulo 2m. More generally we study polynomials whose reciprocals are exponential generating functions for permutations whose run lengths are restricted to certain congruence classes, and extend these results to noncommutative symmetric functions that count words with the same restrictions on run lengths

Applications of the classical umbral calculus

We describe applications of the classical umbral calculus to bilinear generating functions for polynomial sequences, identities for Bernoulli and related numbers, and Kummer congruences.Comment: 34 page

A note on Stirling permutations

In this note we generalize an identity of John Riordan and Robert Donaghey relating the enumerator for Stirling permutations to the Eulerian polynomials.Comment: Originally written in 1978 but not published until no

A simple proof of Andrews's 5F4 evaluation

We give a simple proof of George Andrews's balanced 5F4 evaluation using two fundamental principles: the nth difference of a polynomial of degree less than n is zero, and a polynomial of degree n that vanishes at n+1 points is identically zero

A short proof of the Deutsch-Sagan congruence for connected non crossing graphs

We give a short proof, using Lagrange inversion, of a congruence modulo 3 for the number of connected noncrossing graphs on n vertices that was conjectured by Emeric Deutsch and Bruce Sagan. A more complicated proof had been given earlier by S.-P. Eu, S.-C. Liu, and Y.-N. Yeh

On the Schur function expansion of a symmetric quasi-symmetric function

Egge, Loehr, and Warrington proved a formula for the Schur function expansion of a symmetric function in terms of its expansion in fundamental quasi-symmetric functions. Their formula involves the coefficients of a modified inverse Kostka matrix. Recently Garsia and Remmel gave a simpler reformulation of Egge, Loehr, and Warrington's result, with a new proof. We give here a simple proof of Garsia and Remmel's version, using a sign-reversing involution.Comment: 4 page

The Generating Function of Ternary Trees and Continued Fractions

Michael Somos conjectured a relation between Hankel determinants whose entries $\frac 1{2n+1}\binom{3n}n$ count ternary trees and the number of certain plane partitions and alternating sign matrices. Tamm evaluated these determinants by showing that the generating function for these entries has a continued fraction that is a special case of Gauss's continued fraction for a quotient of hypergeometric series. We give a systematic application of the continued fraction method to a number of similar Hankel determinants. We also describe a simple method for transforming determinants using the generating function for their entries. In this way we transform Somos's Hankel determinants to known determinants, and we obtain, up to a power of 3, a Hankel determinant for the number of alternating sign matrices. We obtain a combinatorial proof, in terms of nonintersecting paths, of determinant identities involving the number of ternary trees and more general determinant identities involving the number of $r$-ary trees.Comment: 44 pages, 12 figure

Shuffle-compatible permutation statistics

Since the early work of Richard Stanley, it has been observed that several permutation statistics have a remarkable property with respect to shuffles of permutations. We formalize this notion of a shuffle-compatible permutation statistic and introduce the shuffle algebra of a shuffle-compatible permutation statistic, which encodes the distribution of the statistic over shuffles of permutations. This paper develops a theory of shuffle-compatibility for descent statistics (statistics that depend only on the descent set and length) which has close connections to the theory of $P$-partitions, quasisymmetric functions, and noncommutative symmetric functions. We use our framework to prove that many descent statistics are shuffle-compatible and to give explicit descriptions of their shuffle algebras, thus unifying past results of Stanley, Gessel, Stembridge, Aguiar-Bergeron-Nyman, and Petersen.Comment: 52 pages. To appear in Adv. Mat

Enumeration of Point-Determining Graphs

Point-determining graphs are graphs in which no two vertices have the same neighborhoods, co-point-determining graphs are those whose complements are point-determining, and bi-point-determining graphs are those both point-determining and co-point-determining. Bicolored point-determining graphs are point-determining graphs whose vertices are properly colored with white and black. We use the combinatorial theory of species to enumerate these graphs as well as the connected cases.Comment: 26 pages, 11 figure

A Combinatorial Interpretation of The Numbers 6(2n)!/n!(n+2)!6(2n)! /n! (n+2)!

It is well known that the numbers $(2m)! (2n)!/m! n! (m+n)!$ are integers, but in general there is no known combinatorial interpretation for them. When $m=0$ these numbers are the middle binomial coefficients $\binom{2n}{n}$, and when $m=1$ they are twice the Catalan numbers. In this paper, we give combinatorial interpretations for these numbers when $m=2$ or 3.Comment: 11 pages, 2 figure