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Permutations $\sigma$ in the symmetric group $S_n$ can be characterized by their Cayley distance $C_\sigma$, being the minimal number of transpositions needed to convert $\{1,2,3,\ldots n\}$ into $\sigma$. The sign of the permutation is $(-1)^{C_\sigma}$.

For example, when $\sigma=\{2, 3, 4, 5, 1\}$, one has $C_\sigma=4$ and for $\sigma=\{1, 2, 3, 5, 4\}$ one has $C_\sigma=1$. Of the $5!$ permutations in $S_5$ there are, respectively, $1,10,35,50,24 $ with Cayley distance $C_\sigma=0,1,2,3,4$.

Question: What is the general formula that counts the number of permutations at a given Cayley distance?

This question was motivated by my attempt to check an integral formula in the unitary group.

Carlo Beenakker
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    https://www.findstat.org/St000216 – Martin Rubey May 11 '19 at 19:49
  • @MartinRubey --- wonderful, thank you for the rapid answer; so the number of permutations in $S_n$ at Cayley distance $k\in{0,1,2,\ldots,n-1}$ equals $|s_{n,n-k}|$, the Stirling number of the first kind. – Carlo Beenakker May 11 '19 at 20:24
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    I admit that I (sort of) knew the answer, but I do enjoy pointing out that filling in a handful of values at https://www.findstat.org/StatisticFinder/Permutations is easier than trying to remember! – Martin Rubey May 11 '19 at 20:34
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    you might just enter this in the answer box so that I can accept it... – Carlo Beenakker May 11 '19 at 20:42
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    It's worth noting that a permutation in $S_n$ with $k$ cycles has Cayley distance $n-k$. This is why Stirling numbers of the first kind appear. – Ira Gessel May 11 '19 at 22:31
  • To be picky, this has nothing to do with the choice of ordering on ${1,\dots,n}$ (unlike the standard Coxeter generators). – YCor May 12 '19 at 11:01

1 Answers1

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The Cayley distance of a permutation is also known as its absolute length, as can be found out by supplying a few values at https://findstat.org/StatisticFinder/Permutations, which yields https://findstat.org/St000216. There, we also find that for a permutation in $\mathfrak S_n$ with $k$ cycles it is simply $n-k$. This fact is, for example, Problem 5.6 in [1].

[1] Petersen, T. Kyle, Eulerian numbers, Birkhäuser Advanced Texts. Basler Lehrbücher. New York, NY: Birkhäuser/Springer (ISBN 978-1-4939-3090-6/hbk; 978-1-4939-3091-3/ebook). xviii, 456 p. (2015). ZBL1337.05001.

Martin Rubey
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