Inversions and Parity in Compositions of Integers
M. Archibald, A. Blecher, and A. Knopfmacher
The John Knopfmacher Centre for Applicable Analysis and Number Theory University of the Witwatersrand
Johannesburg
South Africa
M. E. Mays
West Virginia University
Morgantown, WV 26506-6310
USA
Abstract:
A composition of a positive integer n is a representation of
n as an ordered sum of positive integers a1 +
a2 + · · · + am
= n. There are 2n−1 unrestricted compositions
of n, which can be classified according to the number of
inversions they contain. An inversion in a composition is a pair of
summands {ai, aj}
for which i < j and ai >
aj. We consider compositions of n
counted according to whether they contain an even number or an odd
number of inversions, and include results on compositions where the
first part occurs with odd multiplicity. The following statistics are
also computed for compositions of n: total number of inversions,
total sum of inversion sizes, and number of inversions of size d
or more.
Full version: pdf,
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(Concerned with sequences
A005418
A006516
A007582
A020522
A032085
A045623
A045883
A058884
A063376
A102841
A189052
A331606
A331609.)
Received May 10 2019; revised versions received January 22 2020; March 2 2020.
Published in Journal of Integer Sequences,
March 18 2020.
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