Penney's game for permutations

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Authors: Sergi Elizalde, Yixin Lin
Cited by: 0

Abstract

We consider the permutation analogue of Penney's game for words. Two players, in order, each choose a permutation of length $k\ge3$; then a sequence of independent random values from a continuous distribution is generated, until the relative order of the last $k$ numbers coincides with one of the chosen permutations, making that player the winner. We compute the winning probabilities for all pairs of permutations of length 3 and some pairs of length 4, showing that, as in the original version for words, the game is non-transitive. Our proofs introduce new bijections for consecutive patterns in permutations. We also give some formulas to compute the winning probabilities more generally, and conjecture a winning strategy for the second player when $k$ is arbitrary.

Fields of Study & Subjects

Probability and Statistical Research Advanced Combinatorial Mathematics Benford’s Law and Fraud Detection

Publication details

Journal / source
Discrete Mathematics & Theoretical Computer Science
Volume
vol. 28:1, Permutation...
Issue
Special issues
Publication date
8 July 2026
Language
EN