On the number of chord diagrams (Q1978157)

A chord diagram is an oriented circle with finitely many chords. One obtains a linearized chord diagram by cutting somewhere along the oriented circle and transforming the cut circle into a straight oriented line. This changes the chords into arcs whose endpoints are on the oriented line. A chord diagram or linearized chord diagram is degenerate if it has a chord that does not cross any other chord. A chord diagram is connected if the graph of chords remaining after removing the oriented circle (or line) remains connected. Using combinatorial methods the above defined chord diagrams and other various kinds of chord diagrams are counted depending on the number of chords. One of the reasons that chord diagrams are of mathematical interest is that they are basic objects in the theory of Vassiliev invariants for knots.