A set partition is noncrossing if whenever four elements $a<b<c<d$ are such that $a,c$ are in the same block and $b,d$ are in the same block then $a,b,c,d$ are all in the same block.
Can I get a list of noncrossing set partitions.
With "Combinatorica" I can get ALL the set partitions (say of {1,2,3,4}) with the command SetPartitions[4].
What I want is this list without the element {{1,3},{2,4}} which is not noncrossing.
Needs["Combinatorica`"]
ClearAll[nonCrossingSetPartitions]
nonCrossingSetPartitions =
DeleteCases[{___, {___, a_, ___, c_, ___}, ___, {___, b_, ___, d_, ___}, ___} /;
a < b < c < d] @* SetPartitions;
nonCrossingSetPartitions @ 4 // Column
nonCrossingSetPartitions @ 5 // Length
42
I have a Mathematica package for generating Catalan objects on GitHub, so I have some recursive algorithm which generates what you want. Moreover, it has a nice graphical representation of these, and some operations on these, such as rotation.
Just download the package, and do
Needs["CatalanObjects`"]
Last /@ NonCrossingPartitions[4]
to get
{{{1, 2, 3, 4}}, {{3}, {1, 2, 4}}, {{2}, {1, 3, 4}}, {{1, 4}, {2,
3}}, {{2}, {3}, {1, 4}}, {{1}, {2, 3, 4}}, {{1}, {3}, {2, 4}}, {{1,
2}, {3, 4}}, {{1}, {2}, {3, 4}}, {{4}, {1, 2, 3}}, {{2}, {4}, {1,
3}}, {{1}, {4}, {2, 3}}, {{3}, {4}, {1, 2}}, {{1}, {2}, {3}, {4}}}
If you do not want everything in the package, it should be easy to extract the method.
