We interpret walks in the first quadrant with steps {(1,1),(1,0),(-1,0), (-1,-1)} as a generalization of Dyck words with two sets of letters. Using this language, we give a formal expression for the number of walks in the steps above beginning and ending at the origin. We give an explicit formula for a restricted class of such words using a correspondance between such words and Dyck paths. This explicit formula is exactly the same as that for the degree of the polynomial satisfied by the square of the area of cyclic n-gons conjectured by Dave Robbins although the connection is a mystery. Finally we remark on another combinatorial problem in which the same formula appears and argue for the existence of a bijection.
We present a computer-aided, yet fully rigorous, proof of Ira Gessel's tantalizingly simply-stated conjecture that the number of ways of walking $2n$ steps in the region $x+y \geq 0, y \geq 0$ of the square-lattice with unit steps in the east, west, north, and south directions, that start and end at the origin, equals $16^n\frac{(5/6)_n(1/2)_n}{(5/3)_n(2)_n}$ .
Gessel walks are lattice paths confined to the quarter plane that start at the origin and consist of unit steps going either West, East, South-West or North-East. In 2001, Ira Gessel conjectured a nice closed-form expression for the number of Gessel walks ending at the origin. In 2008, Kauers, Koutschan and Zeilberger gave a computer-aided proof of this conjecture. The same year, Bostan and Kauers showed, again using computer algebra tools, that the complete generating function of Gessel walks is algebraic. In this article we propose the first "human proofs" of these results. They are derived …
In this article, we use Lindström Gessel Viennot Lemma to give a short, combinatorial, visualizable proof of the identity of Schur polynomials -- the sum of monomials of Young tableaux equals to the quotient of determinants. As a by-product, we have a proof of Vandermonde determinant without words. We also prove the cauchy identity. In the remarks, we discuss factorial Schur polynomials, dual Cauchy identity and the relation beteen Newton interpolation formula.
We consider Gessel walks in the plane starting at the origin $(0, 0)$ remaining in the first quadrant $i, j \geq 0$ and made of West, North-East, East and South-West steps. Let $F(m; n_1, n_2)$ denote the number of these walks with exact $m$ steps ending at the point $(n_1, n_2)$, Petkovšek and Wilf posed several analogous conjectures similar to the famous Gessel's conjecture. We establish a probabilistic model of Gessel walks which is concerned with the problem of vicious walkers. This model helps us to obtain the linear homogeneous recurrence relations with binomial coefficients for both $F(…
In this paper we provide a bijective proof of a theorem of Garsia and Gessel describing the generating function of the major index over the set of all permutations of [n]={1,...,n} which are shuffles of given disjoint ordered sequences whose union is [n]. Two special cases are singled out: If the single element j is inserted into any permutation P of the remaining elements of [n], then the theorem states that inserting j into P increases the major index of P by some element of {0,1,...,n-1}, the increase determined uniquely by the index of insertion. We provide a direct proof of this fact usin…
Let F(m; n1, n2) denote the number of lattice walks from (0,0) to (n1,n2), always staying in the first quadrant {(n_1,n_2); n1 >= 0, n2 >= 0} and having exactly m steps, each of which belongs to the set {E=(1,0), W=(-1,0), NE=(1,1), SW=(-1,-1)}. Ira Gessel conjectured that F(2n; 0, 0) = 16^n (1/2)_n (5/6)_n / ((2)_n (5/3)_n) where (a)_n is the Pochhammer symbol. We pose similar conjectures for some other values of (n1,n2), and give closed-form formulas for F(n1; n1, n2) when n1 >= n2 as well as for F(2n2 - n1; n1, n2) when n1 <= n2. In the main part of the paper, we derive a functional equatio…
A permutation whose any prefix has no more descents than ascents is called a ballot permutation. In this paper, we present a decomposition of ballot permutations that enables us to construct a bijection between ballot permutations and odd order permutations, which proves a set-valued extension of a conjecture due to Spiro using the statistic of peak values. This bijection also preserves the neighbors of the largest letter in permutations and thus resolves a refinement of Spiro' s conjecture proposed by Wang and Zhang. Our decomposition can be extended to well-labelled positive paths, a class o…
Gessel conjectured that the two-sided Eulerian polynomial, recording the common distribution of the descent number of a permutation and that of its inverse, has non-negative integer coefficients when expanded in terms of the gamma basis. This conjecture has been proved recently by Lin. We conjecture that an analogous statement holds for simple permutations, and use the substitution decomposition tree of a permutation (by repeated inflation) to show that this would imply the Gessel-Lin result. We provide supporting evidence for this stronger conjecture.
We deduce Narayana's formula for the number of lattice paths that fit in a Young diagram as a direct consequence of the Gessel-Viennot theorem on non-intersecting lattice paths.
As further development of earlier works on the $(f,g)$-inversion, the present paper is devoted to the $(f,g)$-difference operator and the representation problem or an expansion formula of analytic functions. A recursive formula and the Leibniz formula for the $(f,g)$-difference operator of the product of two functions are established. The resulting expansion formula not only unifies the $q$-analogue of the Lagrange inversion formula of Gessel and Stanton (thus, a $q$-expansion formula of Liu) for $q$-series but also systematizes the "Ismail's argument". In the meantime, a rigorous analytic pro…
The Totally Asymmetric Simple Exclusion Process (TASEP) is a non-equilibrium particle model on a finite one-dimensional lattice with open boundaries. In our earlier paper, we obtained a determinantal formula that computes the steady state probabilities of this process by the enumeration of "Catalan alternative tableaux", which are certain fillings of Young diagrams. Here, we present a new, more illuminating bijective proof of this determinantal formula using the Lindström-Gessel-Viennot Lemma.
A {\em leader} of a tree $T$ on $[n]$ is a vertex which has no smaller descendants in $T$. Gessel and Seo showed $$\sum_{T \in \mathcal{T}_n}u^\text{(# of leaders in $T$)} c^\text{(degree of 1 in $T$)}=u P_{n-1}(1,u,cu),$$ which is a generalization of Cayley formula, where $\mathcal{T}_n$ is the set of trees on $[n]$ and $$P_n(a,b,c)=c\prod_{i=1}^{n-1}(ia+(n-i)b+c).$$ Using a variation of Prüfer code which is called a {\em RP-code}, we give a simple bijective proof of Gessel and Seo's formula.
We prove a previously conjectured closed form formula for the norm of the Jack polynomials in superspace with respect to a certain scalar product. The proof is mainly combinatorial and relies on the explicit expression in terms of admissible tableaux of the non-symmetric Jack polynomials. In the final step of the proof appears an identity on weighted sums of partitions that we demonstrate using the methods of Gessel-Viennot.
We give a combinatorial interpretation of a certain positivity conjecture of Chern-Schwartz-MacPherson classes, as stated by P. Aluffi and the author in a previous paper. It translates into a positivity property for a sum of p by p determinants consisting of binomial coefficients, generalizing the classical Theorem of Lindstrom-Gessel-Viennot et al. which computes these determinants in terms of non-intersecting lattice paths. We prove this conjecture for p=2,3.
The great enumerator Germain Kreweras empirically discovered this intriguing fact, and then needed lots of pages[K], and lots of human ingenuity, to prove it. Other great enumerators, for example, Heinrich Niederhausen[N], Ira Gessel[G1], and Mireille Bousquet-Mélou[B], found other ingenious, ``simpler'' proofs. Yet none of them is as simple as ours! Our proof (with the generous help of our faithful computers) is ``ugly'' in the traditional sense, since it would be painful for a lowly human to follow all the steps. But according to our humble aesthetic taste, this proof is much more elegant, s…
By generalizing Gessel-Xin's Laurent series method for proving the Zeilberger-Bressoud $q$-Dyson Theorem, we establish a family of $q$-Dyson style constant term identities. These identities give explicit formulas for certain coefficients of the $q$-Dyson product, including three conjectures of Sills' as special cases and generalizing Stembridge's first layer formulas for characters of $SL(n,\mathbb{C})$.
This article is dedicated to the study of positivity phenomena for the chromatic symmetric function of a graph with respect to various bases of symmetric functions. We give a new proof of Gasharov's theorem on the Schur-positivity of the chromatic symmetric function of a $(3 + 1)$-free poset. We present a combinatorial interpretation of the Schur-coefficients in terms of planar networks. Compared to Gasharov's proof, it gives a clearer visual illustration of the cancellation procedures and is quite similar in spirit to the proof of monomial positivity of Schur functions via the Lindstrom-Gesse…
We consider planar lattice walks that start from (0,0), remain inthe first quadrant i, j >= 0, and are made of three types of steps: North-East, West and South. These walks are known to have remarkable enumerative and probabilistic properties: -- they are counted by nice numbers (Kreweras 1965), -- the generating function of these numbers is algebraic (Gessel 1986), -- the stationary distribution of the corresponding Markov chain in the quadrant has an algebraic probability generating function (Flatto and Hahn 1984). These results are not well understood, and have been established via complica…
In this article, dedicated with admiration and gratitude to guru Neil Sloane on his 75-th birthday, we observe that the generating functions for multi-set permutations that do not contain an increasing subsequence of length d, and where every letter appears the same number of times, say r, are always D-finite, (for every d and every r), and we actually crank out the first few terms of quite a few of them, many of whom are not yet in the OEIS. We also state a conjectured asymptotic formula for these sequences, that reduces to Amitai Regev's famous formula when r=1, and pledge a 100 dollar donat…
We prove a conjecture of Meszaros and Morales on the volume of a flow polytope. Independently from our work, Zeilberger sketched a proof of their conjecture. In fact, our proof is the same as Zeilberger's proof. The purpose of this note is to give a more detailed proof of the conjecture.
We present a new proof of the Joints Theorem without taking derivatives. Then we generalize the proof to prove the Multijoints Conjecture and Carbery's generalization. All results are in any dimension over an arbitrary field.
A simple proof of Atanassov's Conjecture is presented. Atanassov's Conjecture is a generalization of Sperner's Lemma, a lemma which has been used to prove Brouwer's Fixed Point Theorem, among other fixed point theorems. The proof of Atanassov's Conjecture is based on the Brouwer Degree of maps and is extremely elementary. It is much simpler than the original proofs given for the conjecture and provides some insight into the nature of the conjecture. Furthermore, a generalization of the conjecture is presented and finally a new theorem, similar to the original Sperner Lemma, is proved.
In this note, using the derangement polynomials and their umbral representation, we give another simple proof of an identity conjectured by Lacasse in the study of the PAC-Bayesian machine learning theory.
The well-known Steinberg's conjecture asserts that any planar graph without 4- and 5-cycles is 3 colorable. In this note we have given a short algorithmic proof of this conjecture based on the spiral chains of planar graphs proposed in the proof of the four color theorem by the author in 2004.
We present a proof of determinant of special nonsymmetric Toeplitz matrices conjectured by Anđelić and Fonseca in \cite{andjelic2020some}. A proof is also demonstrated for a more general theorem. The two conjectures are therefore just two possible results, under two specific settings. Numerical examples validating the theorem are provided.
We give a proof of a conjecture of A. Lacasse in his doctoral thesis which has applications in machine learning algorithms. The proof relies on some interesting binomial sums identities introduced by Abel (1839), and on their generalization to the multinomial case by Hurwitz (1902).
Rosenfeld Conjectured in 1972 that there exists an integer K $\geq$ 8 such that any tournament of order n $\geq$ K contains any Hamiltonian oriented path. In 2000, Havet and Thomassé proved this conjecture for any tournament with exactly 3 exceptions. We give a simplified proof of this fact.
We give a new proof of a_4ϕ_3 summation due to G.E. Andrews and confirm another_4ϕ_3 summation conjectured by him recently. Some variations of these two_4ϕ_3 summations are also given.
We give a proof of Willcocks's Conjecture, stating that if $p - q$ and $p + q$ are relatively prime, then there exists a Hamiltonian tour of a $(p, q)$-leaper on a square chessboard of side $2(p + q)$. The conjecture was formulated by T. H. Willcocks in 1976 and has been an open problem since.
First, we present a new proof of Glaisher's formula dating from 1900 and concerning Wilson's theorem modulo p^2. Our proof uses p-adic numbers and Faulhaber's formula for the sums of powers (17th century), as well as more recent results on Faulhaber's coefficients obtained by Gessel and Viennot. Second, by using our method, we find a simpler proof than Sun's proof regarding a formula for (p-1)! modulo p^3, and one that can be generalized to higher powers of p. Third, we can derive from our method a way to compute the Stirling numbers modulo p^3, thus improving Glaisher and Sun's own results fr…
Using the polynomial method in additive number theory, this article establishes a new addition theorem for the set of subsums of a set satisfying $A\cap(-A)=\emptyset$ in $\mathbb{Z}/p\mathbb{Z}$: \[|Σ(A)|\geqslant\min{p,1+\frac{|A|(|A|+1)}{2}}.\] The proof is similar in nature to Alon, Nathanson and Ruzsa's proof of the Erdös-Heilbronn conjecture (proved initially by Dias da Silva and Hamidoune \cite{DH}). A key point in the proof of this theorem is the evaluation of some binomial determinants that have been studied in the work of Gessel and Viennot. A generalization to the set of subsums of …
We prove the Strengthened Hanna Neumann Conjecture, in its common graph theoretic formulation. Our original approach to this conjecture used cohomology of sheaves on graphs, although here we give a short combinatorial proof that we found in a succession of simplifications of the cohomological approach. Our proof is inductive, and requires Tardos' previous result settling the rank two case of the conjecture.
In this article, we give an elementary combinatorial proof of a conjecture about the determination of automorphism group of the power graph of finite cyclic groups, proposed by Doostabadi, Erfanian and Jafarzadeh in 2013.
Padberg introduced a geometric notion of ranks for (mixed) integer rational polyhedrons and conjectured that the geometric rank of the matching polytope is one. In this work, we prove that this conjecture is true.
Kanade and Russell conjectured several Rogers-Ramanujan-type partition identities, some of which are related to level $2$ characters of the affine Lie algebra $A_9^{(2)}$. Many of these conjectures have been proved by Bringmann, Jennings-Shaffer and Mahlburg. We give new proofs of five conjectures first proved by those authors, as well as four others that have been open until now. Our proofs for the new cases use quadratic transformations for Askey-Wilson and Rogers polynomials. We also obtain some related results, including a new proof of a partition identity conjectured by Capparelli and fir…
Gog and Magog trapezoids are certain arrays of positive integers that generalize alternating sign matrices (ASMs) and totally symmetric self-complementary plane partitions (TSSCPPs) respectively. Zeilberger used constant term formulas to prove that there is the same number of (n,k)-Gog trapezoids as there is of (n,k)-Magog trapezoids, thereby providing so far the only proof for a weak version of a conjecture by Mills, Robbins and Rumsey from 1986. About 20 years ago, Krattenthaler generalized Gog and Magog trapezoids and formulated an extension of their conjecture, and, recently, Biane and Che…
Recently Dekking conjectured the form of the subword complexity function for the Fibonacci-Thue-Morse sequence. In this note we prove his conjecture by purely computational means, using the free software Walnut.
