The game of plates and olives

MaRDI QIDQ668071zbMATH OpenFDO

Authors Teena Carroll, David Galvin

Publication date 5 March 2019

Published in The Electronic Journal of Combinatorics (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1711.10670, https://www.combinatorics.org/ojs/index.php/eljc/article/view/v26i1p18

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Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Asymptotic enumeration (05A16) Abstract critical point theory (Morse theory, Lyusternik-Shnirel'man theory, etc.) in infinite-dimensional spaces (58E05) Relations of low-dimensional topology with graph theory (57M15)

Abstract: The game of plates and olives, introduced by Nicolaescu, begins with an empty table. At each step either an empty plate is put down, an olive is put down on a plate, an olive is removed, an empty plate is removed, or the olives on two plates that both have olives on them are combined on one of the two plates, with the other plate removed. Plates are indistinguishable from one another, as are olives, and there is an inexhaustible supply of each. The game derives from the consideration of Morse functions on the $2$-sphere. Specifically, the number of topological equivalence classes of excellent Morse functions on the $2$-sphere that have order $n$ (that is, that have $2n+2$ critical points) is the same as the number of ways of returning to an empty table for the first time after exactly $2n+2$ steps. We call this number $M_n$. Nicolaescu gave the lower bound $M_{n}geq(2n-1)!!=(2/e{)}^{n+o(n)}{n}^n$ and speculated that $log{M}_{n}simnlogn$. In this note we confirm this speculation, showing that $M_{n}leq(4/e{)}^{n+o(n)}{n}^n$.

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Cites work

• A random variant of the game of plates and olives
• Counting Morse functions on the 2-sphere
• Differential Posets
• Morse functions statistics
• Smooth functions statistics
• Three problems in combinatorial asymptotics

Cited in

(1)

• A random variant of the game of plates and olives

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