Exploring Werner Krandick's Binary Tree Jump Statistics

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Ekhad, Shalosh B., Zeilberger, Doron
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Ekhad, Shalosh B.
Zeilberger, Doron
author_facet Ekhad, Shalosh B.
Zeilberger, Doron
contents Twenty years ago, Werner Krandick defined two statistics on binary trees. The first one determines the number of jumps, when traversing the tree in depth-first-search, from a vertex to one closer to the root, and the second keeps tracks of the sum of the jump-distances. He used clever but ad hoc human-generated arguments to find explicit expressions for their expectations. In this methodological note, we illustrate the power of experimental mathematics and symbolic computation to do much more. We derive closed-form expressions for the actual weight-enumerators according to these statistics (from which not only the expectations, but also the variances, and as many higher moments as desired, can be obtained). We also actually give the first eight moments, and conjecture that the first statistic (number of jumps) is asymptotically normal, and prove that the second one (sum of jump distances) is definitely not. In this revised version we are happy to announce that Stephen Melczer and Tia Ruza fully proved the asymptotic normality, and we provide a link to their writeup.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2407_12218
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Exploring Werner Krandick's Binary Tree Jump Statistics
Ekhad, Shalosh B.
Zeilberger, Doron
Combinatorics
Twenty years ago, Werner Krandick defined two statistics on binary trees. The first one determines the number of jumps, when traversing the tree in depth-first-search, from a vertex to one closer to the root, and the second keeps tracks of the sum of the jump-distances. He used clever but ad hoc human-generated arguments to find explicit expressions for their expectations. In this methodological note, we illustrate the power of experimental mathematics and symbolic computation to do much more. We derive closed-form expressions for the actual weight-enumerators according to these statistics (from which not only the expectations, but also the variances, and as many higher moments as desired, can be obtained). We also actually give the first eight moments, and conjecture that the first statistic (number of jumps) is asymptotically normal, and prove that the second one (sum of jump distances) is definitely not. In this revised version we are happy to announce that Stephen Melczer and Tia Ruza fully proved the asymptotic normality, and we provide a link to their writeup.
title Exploring Werner Krandick's Binary Tree Jump Statistics
topic Combinatorics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.12218