Inversions in parking functions

Abstract

In this paper, we obtain a q-exponential generating function for inversions on parking functions via symmetric function theory and also through a direct bijection to rooted labeled forests. We then apply these techniques to unit interval parking functions to give analogous results. We conclude by introducing a probabilistic approach through which we obtain formulas for the total number of inversions and several other statistics across all parking functions and other sets of words closed under rearrangement.