Enumeration of derangements with descents in prescribed positions (Q1010942)

Summary: We enumerate derangements with descents in prescribed positions. A generating function was given by Guo-Niu Han and Guoce Xin in 2007. We give a combinatorial proof of this result, and derive several explicit formulas. To this end, we consider fixed point \(\lambda\)-coloured permutations, which are easily enumerated. Several formulae regarding these numbers are given, as well as a generalisation of Euler's difference tables. We also prove that except in a trivial special case, if a permutation \(\pi\) is chosen uniformly among all permutations on \(n\) elements, the events that \(\pi\) has descents in a set \(S\) of positions, and that \(\pi\) is a derangement, are positively correlated.