Enumeration of standard barely set-valued tableaux of shifted shapes (Q6171500)

In a poset, the down-degree of an element is the number of elements it covers. Random variables \(X\) and \(Y\) are defined to be the down-degree of elements chosen uniformly, or proportional to the number of maximal chains containing that element. A poset has the coincidental down-degree expectation (CDE) property if \({\mathbb E}(X)={\mathbb E}(Y)\). Many important families of posets are known to have the CDE property, including certain families of lower intervals in Young's lattice and the lattice of shifted Young diagrams. A standard or shifted barely set-valued tableau is a filling of an \(n\)-cell Young or shifted Young diagram with the numbers \(1,\dots,n+1\) with one cell containing two numbers such that the rows and columns are increasing. The value of \({\mathbb E}(Y)\) for the lower interval \([0,\lambda]\) in either case can be related to the number of barely set-valued tableaux of shape \(\lambda\), and the number of such tableaux is computed by \(q\)-integral techniques. This gives a new proof of a result of \textit{V. Reiner} et al. [J. Comb.\ Theory, Ser.\ A 158, 66--125 (2018; Zbl 1391.05269)] in the standard case, and proves a conjecture from that paper in the shifted case, that the ``trapezoidal'' shifted shape \((n,n-2,\dots,n-2k+2)\) has the CDE property. The authors conjecture that the only diagrams and shifted diagrams with the CDE property are the known families. They also define an \(a; q\)-analogue of \({\mathbb E}(X)\) and conjecture a product formula for a class of lower intervals in the standard Young lattice.