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Hsien-Kuei Hwang

Publications and source records attributed to Hsien-Kuei Hwang.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
arXiv2026

Elementary asymptotics for the Stirling numbers of the second kind: The central range

We derive the local and central limit theorems for the Stirling numbers of the second kind by elementary means, obtaining as corollaries effective asymptotic estimates for the Bell numbers and for the moments of the distribution. We also develop asymptotic expansions along several directions, all based on a novel finite-differencing approach; this provides the first self-contained elementary justification of such expansions.

math.CO↗
arXiv2024

Periodic minimum in the count of binomial coefficients not divisible by a prime

The summatory function of the number of binomial coefficients not divisible by a prime is known to exhibit regular periodic oscillations, yet identifying the less regularly behaved minimum of the underlying periodic functions has been open for almost all cases. We propose an approach to identify such minimum in some generality, solving particularly a previous conjecture of B. Wilson [Asymptotic behavior of Pascal's triangle modulo a prime, Acta Arith. 83 (1998), pp. 105-116].

math.NT↗
arXiv2024

Integrated empirical measures and generalizations of classical goodness-of-fit statistics

Based on $m$-fold integrated empirical measures, we study three new classes of goodness-of-fits tests, generalizing Anderson-Darling, Cramér-von Mises, and Watson statistics, respectively, and examine the corresponding limiting stochastic processes. The limiting null distributions of the statistics all lead to explicitly solvable cases with closed-form expressions for the corresponding Karhunen-Loève expansions and covariance kernels. In particular, the eigenvalues are shown to be $\frac1{k(k+1)\cdots (k+2m-1)}$ for the generalized Anderson-Darling, $\frac1{(πk)^{2m}}$ for the generalized Cramér-von Mises, and $\frac1{2π\lceil k/2\rceil^{2m}}$ for the generalized Watson statistics, respectively. The infinite products of the resulting moment generating functions are further simplified to finite ones so as to facilitate efficient numerical calculations. These statistics are capable of detecting different features of the distributions and thus provide a useful toolbox for goodness-of-fit testing.

math.ST↗
arXiv2022

Analysis of some exactly solvable diminishing urn models

We study several exactly solvable Polya-Eggenberger urn models with a \emph{diminishing} character, namely, balls of a specified color, say $x$ are completely drawn after a finite number of draws. The main quantity of interest here is the number of balls left when balls of color $x$ are completely removed. We consider several diminishing urns studied previously in the literature such as the pills problem, the cannibal urns and the OK Corral problem, and derive exact and limiting distributions. Our approach is based on solving recurrences via generating functions and partial differential equations.

math.CO↗
arXiv2022

Identities and periodic oscillations of divide-and-conquer recurrences splitting at half

We study divide-and-conquer recurrences of the form \begin{equation*} f(n) = αf(\lfloor \tfrac n2\rfloor) + βf(\lceil \tfrac n2\rceil) + g(n) \qquad(n\ge2), \end{equation*} with $g(n)$ and $f(1)$ given, where $α,β\ge0$ with $α+β>0$; such recurrences appear often in analysis of computer algorithms, numeration systems, combinatorial sequences, and related areas. We show that the solution satisfies always the simple \emph{identity} \begin{equation*} f(n) = n^{\log_2(α+β)} P(\log_2n) - Q(n) \end{equation*} under an optimum (iff) condition on $g(n)$. This form is not only an identity but also an asymptotic expansion because $Q(n)$ is of a smaller order. Explicit forms for the \emph{continuity} of the periodic function $P$ are provided, together with a few other smoothness properties. We show how our results can be easily applied to many dozens of concrete examples collected from the literature, and how they can be extended in various directions. Our method of proof is surprisingly simple and elementary, but leads to the strongest types of results for all examples to which our theory applies.

cs.DS↗
arXiv2022

A curious identity in connection with saddle-point method and Stirling's formula

We prove the curious identity in the sense of formal power series: \[ \int_{-\infty}^{\infty}[y^m] \exp\left(-\frac{t^2}2 +\sum_{j\ge3}\frac{(it)^j}{j!}\, y^{j-2}\right)\mathrm{d} t = \int_{-\infty}^{\infty}[y^m] \exp\left(-\frac{t^2}2+ \sum_{j\ge3}\frac{(it)^j}{j}\, y^{j-2}\right)\mathrm{d} t, \] for $m=0,1,\dots$, where $[y^m]f(y)$ denotes the coefficient of $y^m$ in the Taylor expansion of $f$. The generality of this identity from the perspective of saddle-point method is also examined.

math.CO↗
arXiv2021

Bell numbers in Matsunaga's and Arima's Genjikō combinatorics: Modern perspectives and local limit theorems

We examine and clarify in detail the contributions of Yoshisuke Matsunaga (1694?--1744) to the computation of Bell numbers in the eighteenth century (in the Edo period), providing modern perspectives to some unknown materials that are by far the earliest in the history of Bell numbers. Later clarification and developments by Yoriyuki Arima (1714--1783), and several new results such as the asymptotic distributions (notably the corresponding local limit theorems) of a few closely related sequences are also given.

math.CO↗
arXiv2020

Asymptotics and statistics on Fishburn Matrices: dimension distribution and a conjecture of Stoimenow

We establish the asymptotic normality of the dimension of large-size random Fishburn matrices by a complex-analytic approach. The corresponding dual problem of size distribution under large dimension is also addressed and follows a quadratic type normal limit law. These results represent the first of their kind and solve two open questions raised in the combinatorial literature. They are presented in a general framework where the entries of the Fishburn matrices are not limited to binary or nonnegative integers. The analytic saddle-point approach we apply, based on a powerful transformation for $q$-series due to Andrews and Jelínek, is also useful in solving a conjecture of Stoimenow in Vassiliev invariants.

math.CO↗
arXiv2020

Phase transitions from $\exp(n^{1/2})$ to $\exp(n^{2/3})$ in the asymptotics of banded plane partitions

We examine the asymptotics of a class of banded plane partitions under a varying bandwidth parameter $m$, and clarify the transitional behavior for large size $n$ and increasing $m=m(n)$ to be from $c_1 n^{-1} \exp(c_2 n^{1/2})$ to $c_3 n^{-49/72} \exp(c_4 n^{2/3} + c_5 n^{1/3})$ for some explicit coefficients $c_1, \ldots, c_5$. The method of proof, which is a unified saddle-point analysis for all phases, is general and can be extended to other classes of plane partitions.

math.CO↗
arXiv2020

Asymptotics and statistics on Fishburn matrices and their generalizations

A direct saddle-point analysis (without relying on any modular forms, identities or functional equations) is developed to establish the asymptotics of Fishburn matrices and a large number of other variants with a similar sum of-finite-product form for their (formal) general functions. In addition to solving some conjectures, the application of our saddle-point approach to the distributional aspects of statistics on Fishburn matrices is also examined with many new limit theorems characterized, representing the first of their kind for such structures.

math.CO↗
arXiv2020

Node Profiles of Symmetric Digital Search Trees: Concentration Properties

We give a detailed asymptotic analysis of the profiles of random symmetric digital search trees, which are in close connection with the performance of the search complexity of random queries in such trees. While the expected profiles have been analyzed for several decades, the analysis of the variance turns out to be very difficult and challenging, and requires the combination of several different analytic techniques, including Mellin and Laplace transforms, analytic de-Poissonization, and Laplace convolutions. Our results imply concentration of the profiles in the range where the mean tends to infinity. Moreover, we also obtain a two-point concentration for the distributions of the height and the saturation level.

math.PR↗
arXiv2019

An asymptotic distribution theory for Eulerian recurrences with applications

We study linear recurrences of Eulerian type of the form \[ P_n(v) = (α(v)n+γ(v))P_{n-1}(v) +β(v)(1-v)P_{n-1}'(v)\qquad(n\ge1), \] with $P_0(v)$ given, where $α(v), β(v)$ and $γ(v)$ are in most cases polynomials of low degrees. We characterize the various limit laws of the coefficients of $P_n(v)$ for large $n$ using the method of moments and analytic combinatorial tools under varying $α(v), β(v)$ and $γ(v)$, and apply our results to more than two hundred of concrete examples when $β(v)\ne0$ and more than three hundred when $β(v)=0$ that we gathered from the literature and from Sloane's OEIS database. The limit laws and the convergence rates we worked out are almost all new and include normal, half-normal, Rayleigh, beta, Poisson, negative binomial, Mittag-Leffler, Bernoulli, etc., showing the surprising richness and diversity of such a simple framework, as well as the power of the approaches used.

math.CO↗
arXiv2019

Sharp Bounds on the Runtime of the (1+1) EA via Drift Analysis and Analytic Combinatorial Tools

The expected running time of the classical (1+1) EA on the OneMax benchmark function has recently been determined by Hwang et al. (2018) up to additive errors of $O((\log n)/n)$. The same approach proposed there also leads to a full asymptotic expansion with errors of the form $O(n^{-K}\log n)$ for any $K>0$. This precise result is obtained by matched asymptotics with rigorous error analysis (or by solving asymptotically the underlying recurrences via inductive approximation arguments), ideas radically different from well-established techniques for the running time analysis of evolutionary computation such as drift analysis. This paper revisits drift analysis for the (1+1) EA on OneMax and obtains that the expected running time $E(T)$, starting from $\lceil n/2\rceil$ one-bits, is determined by the sum of inverse drifts up to logarithmic error terms, more precisely $$\sum_{k=1}^{\lfloor n/2\rfloor}\frac{1}{Δ(k)} - c_1\log n \le E(T) \le \sum_{k=1}^{\lfloor n/2\rfloor}\frac{1}{Δ(k)} - c_2\log n,$$ where $Δ(k)$ is the drift (expected increase of the number of one-bits from the state of $n-k$ ones) and $c_1,c_2 >0$ are explicitly computed constants. This improves the previous asymptotic error known for the sum of inverse drifts from $\tilde{O}(n^{2/3})$ to a logarithmic error and gives for the first time a non-asymptotic error bound. Using standard asymptotic techniques, the difference between $E(T)$ and the sum of inverse drifts is found to be $(e/2)\log n+O(1)$.

cs.NE↗
arXiv2018

Asymptotic Distribution of Parameters in Random Maps

We consider random rooted maps without regard to their genus, with fixed large number of edges, and address the problem of limiting distributions for six different parameters: vertices, leaves, loops, root edges, root isthmus, and root vertex degree. Each of these leads to a different limiting distribution, varying from (discrete) geometric and Poisson distributions to different continuous ones: Beta, normal, uniform, and an unusual distribution whose moments are characterised by a recursive triangular array.

math.CO↗
arXiv2017

Dependence between Path-length and Size in Random Digital Trees

We study the size and the external path length of random tries and show that they are asymptotically independent in the asymmetric case but strongly dependent with small periodic fluctuations in the symmetric case. Such an unexpected behavior is in sharp contrast to the previously known results on random tries that the size is totally positively correlated to the internal path length and that both tend to the same normal limit law. These two dependence examples provide concrete instances of bivariate normal distributions (as limit laws) whose correlation is $0$, $1$ and periodically oscillating. Moreover, the same type of behaviors is also clarified for other classes of digital trees such as bucket digital trees and Patricia tries.

math.PR↗
arXiv2016

Dependence between External Path-Length and Size in Random Tries

We study the size and the external path length of random tries and show that they are asymptotically independent in the asymmetric case but strongly dependent with small periodic fluctuations in the symmetric case. Such an unexpected behavior is in sharp contrast to the previously known results that the internal path length is totally positively correlated to the size and that both tend to the same normal limit law. These two examples provide concrete instances of bivariate normal distributions (as limit laws) whose correlation is $0$, $1$ and periodically oscillating.

math.CO↗
arXiv2016

Dependence and phase changes in random $m$-ary search trees

We study the joint asymptotic behavior of the space requirement and the total path length (either summing over all root-key distances or over all root-node distances) in random $m$-ary search trees. The covariance turns out to exhibit a change of asymptotic behavior: it is essentially linear when $3\le m\le 13$ but becomes of higher order when $m\ge14$. Surprisingly, the corresponding asymptotic correlation coefficient tends to zero when $3\le m\le 26$ but is periodically oscillating for larger $m$. Such a less anticipated phenomenon is not exceptional and we extend the results in two directions: one for more general shape parameters, and the other for other classes of random log-trees such as fringe-balanced binary search trees and quadtrees. The methods of proof combine asymptotic transfer for the underlying recurrence relations with the contraction method.

math.PR↗