A probabilistic approach to the asymptotics of the length of the longest alternating subsequence (Q612956)

Summary: Let \(LA_n(\tau )\) be the length of the longest alternating subsequence of a uniform random permutation \(\tau \in [n]\). Classical probabilistic arguments are used to rederive the asymptotic mean, variance and limiting law of \(LA_n (\tau)\). Our methodology is robust enough to tackle similar problems for finite alphabet random words or even Markovian sequences in which case our results are mainly original. A sketch of how some cases of pattern restricted permutations can also be tackled with probabilistic methods is finally presented.