We prove that the combinatorial distance between any two reduced expressions of a given permutation of {1, ..., n} in terms of transpositions lies in O(n^4), a sharp bound. Using a connection with the intersection numbers of certain curves in van Kampen diagrams, we prove that this bound is sharp, and give a practical criterion for proving that the derivations provided by the reversing algorithm of [Dehornoy, JPAA 116 (1997) 115-197] are optimal. We also show the existence of length l expressions whose reversing requires C l^4 elementary steps.
In this paper, we introduce plane permutations, i.e. pairs $\mathfrak{p}=(s,π)$ where $s$ is an $n$-cycle and $π$ is an arbitrary permutation, represented as a two-row array. Accordingly a plane permutation gives rise to three distinct permutations: the permutation induced by the upper horizontal ($s$), the vertical $π$) and the diagonal ($D_{\mathfrak{p}}$) of the array. The latter can also be viewed as the three permutations of a hypermap. In particular, a map corresponds to a plane permutation, in which the diagonal is a fixed point-free involution. We study the transposition action on plan…
A classical recursive construction for mutually orthogonal latin squares (MOLS) is shown to hold more generally for a class of permutation codes of length $n$ and minimum distance $n-1$. When such codes of length $p+1$ are included as ingredients, we obtain a general lower bound $M(n,n-1) \ge n^{1.079}$ for large $n$, gaining a small improvement on the guarantee given from MOLS.
In this paper we prove that two quantities relating to the length of permutations defined on trees are independent of the structures of trees. We also find that these results are closely related to the results obtained by Graham and Pollak (Bell System Tech. J. 50(1971) 2495--2519) and by Bapat, Kirkland, and Neumann (Linear Alg. Appl. 401(2005) 193--209).
We show that the problem of computing the distance of a given permutation from a subgroup $H$ of $S_n$ is in general NP-complete, even under the restriction that $H$ is elementary Abelian of exponent 2. The problem is shown to be polynomial-time equivalent to a problem related to finding a maximal partition of the edges of an Eulerian directed graph into cycles and this problem is in turn equivalent to the standard NP-complete problem of Boolean satisfiability.
In this paper we generalize permutations to plane permutations. We employ this framework to derive a combinatorial proof of a result of Zagier and Stanley, that enumerates the number of $n$-cycles $ω$, for which $ω(12\cdots n)$ has exactly $k$ cycles. This quantity is $0$, if $n-k$ is odd and $\frac{2C(n+1,k)}{n(n+1)}$, otherwise, where $C(n,k)$ is the unsigned Stirling number of the first kind. The proof is facilitated by a natural transposition action on plane permutations which gives rise to various recurrences. Furthermore we study several distance problems of permutations. It turns out th…
Let $π$ be a permutation of $\{1,2,\ldots,n\}$. If we identify a permutation with its graph, namely the set of $n$ dots at positions $(i,π(i))$, it is natural to consider the minimum $L^1$ (Manhattan) distance, $d(π)$, between any pair of dots. The paper computes the expected value (and higher moments) of $d(π)$ when $n\rightarrow\infty$ and $π$ is chosen uniformly, and settles a conjecture of Bevan, Homberger and Tenner (motivated by permutation patterns), showing that when $d$ is fixed and $n\rightarrow\infty$, the probability that $d(π)\geq d+2$ tends to $e^{-d^2 - d}$. The minimum jump $mj…
We give a compact expression for the number of factorizations of any permutation into a minimal number of transpositions of the form $(1 i)$. Our result generalizes earlier work of Pak in which substantial restrictions were placed on the permutation being factored.
Following Babai's algorithm for the string isomorphism problem, we determine that it is possible to write expressions of short length describing certain permutation cosets, including all permutation subgroups; this is feasible both in the original version of the algorithm and in its CFSG-free version, partially done by Babai and completed by Pyber. The existence of such descriptions gives a weak form of the Cameron-Maróti classification even without assuming CFSG. We also thoroughly explicate Babai's recursion process (as given in Helfgott) and obtain explicit constants for the runtime of the …
Entringer numbers occur in the André permutation combinatorial set-up under several forms. This leads to the construction of a matrix-analog refinement of the tangent (resp. secant) numbers. Furthermore, closed expressions for the three-variate exponential generating functions for pairs of so-called Entringerian statistics are derived.
The prefix exchange distance of a permutation is the minimum number of exchanges involving the leftmost element that sorts the permutation. We give new combinatorial proofs of known results on the distribution of the prefix exchange distance for a random uniform permutation. We also obtain expressions for the mean and the variance of this distribution, and finally, we show that the normalised prefix exchange distribution converges in distribution to the standard normal distribution.
We prove that in a large collection of naturally defined sets of permutations of fixed length, the numbers of permutations at Ulam distance k from the identity form a log-concave sequence in k.
We use the theory of symmetric functions to enumerate various classes of alternating permutations w of {1,2,...,n}. These classes include the following: (1) both w and w^{-1} are alternating, (2) w has certain special shapes, such as (m-1,m-2,...,1), under the RSK algorithm, (3) w has a specified cycle type, and (4) w has a specified number of fixed points. We also enumerate alternating permutations of a multiset. Most of our formulas are umbral expressions where after expanding the expression in powers of a variable E, E^k is interpreted as the Euler number E_k. As a small corollary, we obtai…
Twisted permutation codes, introduced recently by the second and third authors, are frequency permutation arrays. They are similar to repetition permutation codes, in that they are obtained by a repetition construction applied to a smaller code. It was previously shown that the minimum distance of a twisted permutation code is at least the minimum distance of a corresponding repetition permutation code, but in some instances can be larger. We construct two new infinite families of twisted permutation codes with minimum distances strictly greater than those for the corresponding repetition perm…
For a right invariant distance on a permutation space $S_n$ we give a sufficient condition for the cardinality of a ball of radius $R$ to grow polynomially in $n$ for fixed $R$. For the distance $\ell_1$ we show that for an integer $k$ the cardinality of a sphere of radius $2k$ in $S_n$ (for $n \geqslant k$) is a polynomial of degree $k$ in $n$ and determine the high degree terms of this polynomial.
We introduce twisted permutation codes, which are frequency permutation arrays analogous to repetition permutation codes, namely, codes obtained from the repetition construction applied to a permutation code. In particular, we show that a lower bound for the minimum distance of a twisted permutation code is the minimum distance of a repetition permutation code. We give examples where this bound is tight, but more importantly, we give examples of twisted permutation codes with minimum distance strictly greater than this lower bound.
We prove that an inclusion-exclusion inspired expression of Schubert polynomials of permutations that avoid the patterns 1432 and 1423 is nonnegative. Our theorem implies a partial affirmative answer to a recent conjecture of Yibo Gao about principal specializations of Schubert polynomials. We propose a general framework for finding inclusion-exclusion inspired expression of Schubert polynomials of all permutations.
Permutation arrays under the Chebyshev metric have been considered for error correction in noisy channels. Let $P(n,d)$ denote the maximum size of any array of permutations on $n$ symbols with pairwise Chebyshev distance $d$. We give new techniques and improved upper and lower bounds on $P(n,d)$, including a precise formula for $P(n,2)$.
Introduced by Mallows in statistical ranking theory, Mallows permutation model is a class of non-uniform probability measures on the symmetric group $S_n$ that depend on a distance metric $d(σ,τ)$ on $S_n$ and a scale parameter $β$. Taking the distance metric to be the $L^1$ and $L^2$ distances--which are respectively known as Spearman's footrule and Spearman's rank correlation in the statistics literature--leads to Mallows permutation models with $L^1$ and $L^2$ distances. In this paper, we study the length of the longest increasing subsequence of random permutations drawn from Mallows permut…
In this paper we present a topological framework for studying signed permutations and their reversal distance. As a result we can give an alternative approach and interpretation of the Hannenhalli-Pevzner formula for the reversal distance of signed permutations. Our approach utlizes the Poincaré dual, upon which reversals act in a particular way and obsoletes the notion of "padding" of the signed permutations. To this end we construct a bijection between signed permutations and an equivalence class of particular fatgraphs, called $π$-maps, and analyze the action of reversals on the latter. We …
We show that for every hereditary permutation property P and every eps>0, there exists an integer M such that if a permutation p is eps-far from P in the Kendall's tau distance, then a random subpermutation of p of order M has the property P with probability at most eps. This settles an open problem whether hereditary permutation properties are strongly testable, i.e., testable with respect to the Kendall's tau distance. In addition, our method also yields a proof of a conjecture of Hoppen, Kohayakawa, Moreira and Sampaio on the relation of the rectangular distance and the Kendall's tau distan…
There exists a bijection between one stack sortable permutations --permutations which avoid the pattern 231-- and planar trees. We define an edit distance between permutations which is coherent with the standard edit distance between trees. This one-to-one correspondence yields a polynomial algorithm for the subpermutation problem for $(231)$ avoiding permutations. Moreover, we obtain the generating function of the edit distance between ordered trees and some special ones. For the general case we show that the mean edit distance between a planar tree and all other planar trees is at least $n/l…
Motivated by recent interest in permutation arrays, we introduce and investigate the more general concept of frequency permutation arrays (FPAs). An FPA of length n=m lambda and distance d is a set T of multipermutations on a multiset of m symbols, each repeated with frequency lambda, such that the Hamming distance between any distinct x,y in T is at least d. Such arrays have potential applications in powerline communication. In this paper, we establish basic properties of FPAs, and provide direct constructions for FPAs using a range of combinatorial objects, including polynomials over finite …
Computing the reversal distances of signed permutations is an important topic in Bioinformatics. Recently, a new lower bound for the reversal distance was obtained via the plane permutation framework. This lower bound appears different from the existing lower bound obtained by Bafna and Pevzner through breakpoint graphs. In this paper, we prove that the two lower bounds are equal. Moreover, we confirm a related conjecture on skew-symmetric plane permutations, which can be restated as follows: let $p=(0,-1,-2,\ldots -n,n,n-1,\ldots 1)$ and let $$ \tilde{s}=(0,a_1,a_2,\ldots a_n,-a_n,-a_{n-1},\l…
In this paper we present a simple framework to study various distance problems of permutations, including the transposition and block-interchange distance of permutations as well as the reversal distance of signed permutations. These problems are very important in the study of the evolution of genomes. We give a general formulation for lower bounds of the transposition and block-interchange distance from which the existing lower bounds obtained by Bafna and Pevzner, and Christie can be easily derived. As to the reversal distance of signed permutations, we translate it into a block-interchange …
In this paper we use a probabilistic approach to derive the expressions for the characteristic functions of basic statistics defined on permutation tableaux. Since our expressions are exact, we can identify the distributions of basic statistics (like the number of unrestricted rows, the number of rows, and the number of 1s in the first row) exactly. In all three cases the distributions are known to be asymptotically normal after a suitable normalization. We also establish the asymptotic normality of the number of superfluous 1s. The latter result relies on a bijection between permutation table…
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 Steingrímsson's sorting conjecture…
Mallows permutation model, introduced by Mallows in statistical ranking theory, is a class of non-uniform probability measures on the symmetric group $S_n$. The model depends on a distance metric $d(σ,τ)$ on $S_n$, which can be chosen from a host of metrics on permutations. In this paper, we focus on Mallows permutation models with $L^1$ and $L^2$ distances, respectively known in the statistics literature as Spearman's footrule and Spearman's rank correlation. Unlike most of the random permutation models that have been analyzed in the literature, Mallows permutation models with $L^1$ and $L^2$…
We construct a direct natural bijection between descending plane partitions without any special part and permutations. The directness is in the sense that the bijection avoids any reference to nonintersecting lattice paths. The advantage of the bijection is that it provides an interpretation for the seemingly long list of conditions needed to define descending plane partitions. Unfortunately, the bijection does not relate the number of parts of the descending plane partition with the number of inversions of the permutation as one might have expected from the conjecture of Mills, Robbins and Ru…
Two factorizations of a permutation into products of cycles are equivalent if one can be obtained from the other by repeatedly interchanging adjacent disjoint factors. This paper studies the enumeration of equivalence classes under this relation. We obtain closed form expressions for generating series of inequivalent minimal transitive factorizations of permutations having up to three cycles, and also of permutations with four cycles when factors are restricted to be transpositions. Our derivations rely on a new correspondence between inequivalent factorizations and acyclic alternating digraph…
We give a combinatorial formula for the Kazhdan-Lusztig polynomials $P_{x,w}$ in the symmetric group when $w$ is a 321-hexagon-avoiding permutation. Our formula, which depends on a combinatorial framework developed by Deodhar, can be expressed in terms of a simple statistic on all subexpressions of any fixed reduced expression for $w$. We also show that $w$ being 321-hexagon-avoiding is equivalent to several other conditions, such as the Bott-Samelson resolution of the Schubert variety $X_w$ being small. We conclude with a simple method for completely determining the singular locus of $X_w$ wh…
On March 2004, Anshel, Anshel, Goldfeld, and Lemieux introduced the \emph{Algebraic Eraser} scheme for key agreement over an insecure channel, using a novel hybrid of infinite and finite noncommutative groups. They also introduced the \emph{Colored Burau Key Agreement Protocol (CBKAP)}, a concrete realization of this scheme. We present general, efficient heuristic algorithms, which extract the shared key out of the public information provided by CBKAP. These algorithms are, according to heuristic reasoning and according to massive experiments, successful for all sizes of the security parameter…
The notion of partial geodesic was introduced by Jamshidpey et al. in "Sets of medians in the non-geodesic pseudometric space of unsigned genomes with breakpoints", 2014. In this paper, we study the density of points on non-trivial partial geodesics between two permutations $ξ_1^{(n)}$ and $ξ_2^{(n)}$ chosen uniformly and independently at random from the symmetric group $S_n$, where $S_n$ is endowed with the breakpoint distance. For a permutation $π:= π_1 \ ... \ π_n$, any unordered pair $\{π_i , π_{i+1}\}$, for $i=1, ..., n-1$, is called an adjacency of $π$. The set of all adjacencies of $π$ …
We study $P(n,3)$, the size of the largest subset of the set of all permutations $S_n$ with minimum Kendall $τ$-distance $3$. Using a combination of group theory and integer programming, we reduced the upper bound of $P(p,3)$ from $(p-1)!-1$ to $(p-1)!-\lceil\frac{p}{3}\rceil+2\leq (p-1)!-2$ for all primes $p\geq 11$. In special cases where $n$ is equal to $6,7,11,13,14,15$ and $17$ we reduced the upper bound of $P(n,3)$ by $3,3,9,11,1,1$ and $4$, respectively.
The past decade has seen a flurry of research into pattern avoiding permutations but little of it is concerned with their exhaustive generation. Many applications call for exhaustive generation of permutations subject to various constraints or imposing a particular generating order. In this paper we present generating algorithms and combinatorial Gray codes for several families of pattern avoiding permutations. Among the families under consideration are those counted by Catalan, Schröder, Pell, even index Fibonacci numbers and the central binomial coefficients. Consequently, this provides Gray…
New bounds on the cardinality of permutation codes equipped with the Ulam distance are presented. First, an integer-programming upper bound is derived, which improves on the Singleton-type upper bound in the literature for some lengths. Second, several probabilistic lower bounds are developed, which improve on the known lower bounds for large minimum distances. The results of a computer search for permutation codes are also presented.
In this paper we prove new lower bounds for the maximal size of permutation codes by connecting the theory of permutation codes with the theory of linear block codes. More specifically, using the columns of a parity check matrix of an $[n,k,d]_q$ linear block code, we are able to prove the existence of a permutation code in the symmetric group of degree $n$, having minimum distance at least $d$ and large cardinality. With our technique, we obtain new lower bounds for permutation codes that enhance the ones in the literature and provide asymptotic improvements in certain regimes of length and d…
We give a new proof of the Frankl-Rödl theorem on forbidden intersections, via the probabilistic method of dependent random choice. Our method extends to codes with forbidden distances, where over large alphabets our bound is significantly better than that obtained by Frankl and Rödl. We also apply our bound to a question of Ellis on sets of permutations with forbidden distances, and to establish a weak form of a conjecture of Alon, Shpilka and Umans on sunflowers.
Permutation codes under different metrics have been extensively studied due to their potentials in various applications. Generalized Cayley metric is introduced to correct generalized transposition errors, including previously studied metrics such as Kendall's $τ$-metric, Ulam metric and Cayley metric as special cases. Since the generalized Cayley distance between two permutations is not easily computable, Yang et al. introduced a related metric of the same order, named the block permutation metric. Given positive integers $n$ and $d$, let $\mathcal{C}_{B}(n,d)$ denote the maximum size of a pe…
Let M(n, d) be the maximum size of a permutation array on n symbols with pairwise Hamming distance at least d. We use various combinatorial, algebraic, and computational methods to improve lower bounds for M(n, d). We compute the Hamming distances of affine semilinear groups and projective semilinear groups, and unions of cosets of AGL(1,q) and PGL(2,q) with Frobenius maps to obtain new, improved lower bounds for M(n,d). We give new randomized algorithms. We give better lower bounds for M(n,d) also using new theorems concerning the contraction operation. For example, we prove a quadratic lower…
There is a natural map from a symmetric group $S_n$ to a smaller symmetric group $S_{n-1}$, we write a decomposition of a permutation into a product of disjoint cycles and remove the element $n$ from this expression. For this reason there exists the inverse limit $\mathfrak{S}$ of sets $S_n$. We equip $S_n$ with the uniform distribution (or more generally with an Ewens distribution) and get a structure of a measure space on $\mathfrak{S}$ (it is called 'virtual permutations' or 'Chinese restaurant process'), a double $S_\infty\times S_\infty $ of an infinite symmetric group acts on $\mathfrak{…
In genome rearrangements, the mutational event transposition swaps two adjacent blocks of genes in one chromosome. The Transposition Distance Problem (TDP) aims to find the minimum number of transpositions required to transform one chromosome into another, both represented as permutations. The TDP can be reduced to the problem of Sorting by Transpositions (SBT). SBT is $\mathcal{NP}$-hard and the best approximation algorithm with a $1.375$ ratio was proposed by Elias and Hartman. Their algorithm employs simplification, a technique used to transform an input permutation $π$ into a simple permut…
Let $d$ be a positive integer and $x$ a real number. Let $A_{d, x}$ be a $d\times 2d$ matrix with its entries $$ a_{i,j}=\left\{ \begin{array}{ll} x\ \ & \mbox{for} \ 1\leqslant j\leqslant d+1-i, 1\ \ & \mbox{for} \ d+2-i\leqslant j\leqslant d+i, 0\ \ & \mbox{for} \ d+1+i\leqslant j\leqslant 2d. \end{array} \right. $$ Further, let $R_d$ be a set of sequences of integers as follows: $$R_d=\{(ρ_1, ρ_2,\ldots, ρ_d)|1\leqslant ρ_i\leqslant d+i, 1\leqslant i \leqslant d,\ \mbox{and}\ ρ_r\neq ρ_s\ \mbox{for}\ r\neq s\}.$$ and define $$Ω_d(x)=\sum_{ρ\in R_d}a_{1,ρ_1}a_{2, ρ_2}\ldots a_{d,ρ_d}.$$ In o…
An (n,d)-permutation code is a subset C of Sym(n) such that the Hamming distance d_H between any two distinct elements of C is at least equal to d. In this paper, we use the characterisation of the isometry group of the metric space (Sym(n),d_H) in order to develop generating algorithms with rejection of isomorphic objects. To classify the (n,d)-permutation codes up to isometry, we construct invariants and study their efficiency. We give the numbers of non-isometric (4,3)- and (5,4)- permutation codes. Maximal and balanced (n,d)-permutation codes are enumerated in a constructive way.
Linear constraints for a matrix polytope with no fractional vertex are investigated as intersecting research among permutation codes, rank modulations, and linear programming methods. By focusing the discussion to the block structure of matrices, new classes of such polytopes are obtained from known small polytopes. This concept, called "consolidation", is applied to find a new compact graph which is known as an approach for the graph isomorphism problem. Encoding and decoding algorithms for our new permutation codes are obtained from existing algorithms for small polytopes. The minimum distan…
Let $A_2(n,d)$ be the maximum size of a binary code of length $n$ and minimum distance $d$. In this paper we present the following new lower bounds: $A_2(18,4) \ge 5632$, $A_2(21,4) \ge 40960$, $A_2(22,4) \ge 81920$, $A_2(23,4) \ge 163840$, $A_2(24,4) \ge 327680$, $A_2(24,10) \ge 136$, and $A_2(25,6) \ge 17920$. The new lower bounds are a result of a systematic computer search over transitive permutation groups.
We develop an algorithm based on three basic DNA editing operations suggested by a model for ciliate micronuclear decryption, to transform a given permutation into another. The number of ciliate operations performed by our algorithm during such a transformation is taken to be the distance between two such permutations. Applying well-known clustering methods to such distance functions enables one to determine phylogenies among the items to which the distance functions apply. As an application of these ideas we explore the relationships among the chromosomes of eight fruitfly (drosophila) specie…
