Schröder number

In mathematics, the Schröder number also called a large Schröder number or big Schröder number, describes the number of lattice paths from the southwest corner of an grid to the northeast corner using only single steps north, northeast, or east, that do not rise above the SW–NE diagonal. The first few Schröder numbers are 1, 2, 6, 22, 90, 394, 1806, 8558, ... . where and They were named after the German mathematician Ernst Schröder. The following figure shows the 6 such paths through a grid: A Schröder path of length is a lattice path from to with steps northeast, east, and southeast, that do not go below the -axis. The th Schröder number is the number of Schröder paths of length . The following figure shows the 6 Schröder paths of length 2. Similarly, the Schröder numbers count the number of ways to divide a rectangle into smaller rectangles using cuts through points given inside the rectangle in general position, each cut intersecting one of the points and dividing only a single rectangle in two (i.e., the number of structurally-different guillotine partitions). This is similar to the process of triangulation, in which a shape is divided into nonoverlapping triangles instead of rectangles. The following figure shows the 6 such dissections of a rectangle into 3 rectangles using two cuts: Pictured below are the 22 dissections of a rectangle into 4 rectangles using three cuts: The Schröder number also counts the separable permutations of length Schröder numbers are sometimes called large or big Schröder numbers because there is another Schröder sequence: the little Schröder numbers, also known as the Schröder-Hipparchus numbers or the super-Catalan numbers. The connections between these paths can be seen in a few ways: Consider the paths from to with steps and that do not rise above the main diagonal. There are two types of paths: those that have movements along the main diagonal and those that do not. The (large) Schröder numbers count both types of paths, and the little Schröder numbers count only the paths that only touch the diagonal but have no movements along it.

About this result

This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.

Related publications (1)

Related concepts (2)

Computation of Al-Salam Carlitz and Askey-Wilson moments using Motzkin paths

Gaspard Ohlmann

In this paper we study the moments of polynomials from the Askey scheme, and we focus on Askey-Wilson polynomials. More precisely, we give a combinatorial proof for the case where d = 0. Their values have already been computed by Kim and Stanton in 2015, h ...

ELECTRONIC JOURNAL OF COMBINATORICS2021

Narayana number

In combinatorics, the Narayana numbers form a triangular array of natural numbers, called the Narayana triangle, that occur in various counting problems. They are named after Canadian mathematician T. V. Narayana (1930–1987). The Narayana numbers can be expressed in terms of binomial coefficients: The first eight rows of the Narayana triangle read: An example of a counting problem whose solution can be given in terms of the Narayana numbers , is the number of words containing n pairs of parentheses, which are correctly matched (known as Dyck words) and which contain k distinct nestings.

Catalan number

In combinatorial mathematics, the Catalan numbers are a sequence of natural numbers that occur in various counting problems, often involving recursively defined objects. They are named after the French-Belgian mathematician Eugène Charles Catalan. The nth Catalan number can be expressed directly in terms of the central binomial coefficients by The first Catalan numbers for n = 0, 1, 2, 3, ... are 1, 1, 2, 5, 14, 42, 132, 429, 1430, 4862, 16796, 58786, ... . An alternative expression for Cn is for which is equivalent to the expression given above because .