Further Results on Pinnacle Sets

Abstract

The study of pinnacle sets has been a recent area of interest in combinatorics. Given a permutation, its pinnacle set is the set of all values larger than the values on either side of it. Largely inspired by conjectures posed by Davis, Nelson, Petersen, and Tenner and also results proven recently by Fang, this paper aims to add to our understanding of pinnacle sets. In particular, we give a simpler and more combinatorial proof of a weighted sum formula previously proven by Fang. Additionally, we give a recursion for counting the admissible orderings of the elements of a potential pinnacle set. Finally, we give another way of viewing pinnacle sets that sheds light on their structure and also yields a recursion for counting the number of permutations with that pinnacle set.