On the limiting distribution for the length of the longest alternating sequence in a random permutation (Q819187)

Summary: Recently Richard Stanley initiated a study of the distribution of the length as\(_n(w)\) of the longest alternating subsequence in a random permutation \(w\) from the symmetric group \({\mathcal S}_n\). Among other things he found an explicit formula for the generating function (on \(n\) and \(k\)) for Pr\(\,\)(as\(_n(w)\leq k)\) and conjectured that the distribution, suitably centered and normalized, tended to a Gaussian with variance 8/45. In this note we present a proof of the conjecture based on the generating function.