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Ballot Problem

This document discusses Désiré André's original 1887 solution to the Ballot Problem, which differs from the commonly attributed "reflection method". André counted the number of bad ballot permutations directly by categorizing them and using an exchange argument, without geometry. While André's method generalizes to solve the Generalized Ballot Problem, the reflection method does not. It was recently discovered that André never used reflection, and his actual counting method is celebrated.

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117 views10 pages

Ballot Problem

This document discusses Désiré André's original 1887 solution to the Ballot Problem, which differs from the commonly attributed "reflection method". André counted the number of bad ballot permutations directly by categorizing them and using an exchange argument, without geometry. While André's method generalizes to solve the Generalized Ballot Problem, the reflection method does not. It was recently discovered that André never used reflection, and his actual counting method is celebrated.

Uploaded by

Sounak
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 10

7/31/2007

Lost in Translation: A
Reflection on the Ballot
Problem and Andr's
Original Method
Marc Renault
Shippensburg University

Presented at MathFest

August 5, 2007

The Ballot Problem (1887)


In how many ways
can a upsteps and
b downsteps be
ordered so that no
step ends on or
below the x-axis?

GOOD

a=8
b=6
BAD

7/31/2007

The number of good paths is

a b a b
a b a
Joseph Bertrand
1822 - 1900

Bertrand asked Is there a direct proof?

Dsir Andr (1887)


Solves the ballot problem!
And mathematicians celebrate!

Dsir Andr
1840 - 1917

Today, the most famous solution to the ballot


problem is Andrs Reflection Method

7/31/2007

Number of
good paths

Number of good paths


from (1, 1) to T.

Terminal point T
has coordinates
(a+b, a-b)

Trick: count the number of bad


paths from (1,1) to T.

Bad paths from


(1,1) to T

All paths from


(1, -1) to T

7/31/2007

Number of good paths from (0,0)


= Number of good paths from (1,1)
= [ Total number of paths from (1,1) ]

- [ Number of bad paths from (1,1) ]


reflection

= [ Total number of paths from (1,1) ]


- [ Total number of paths from (1,-1) ]

Total # of paths from (1,1):

a - 1 upsteps
b downsteps
Total:

a b 1
b

Total # of paths from (1,-1):

a upsteps
b - 1 downsteps
Total:

a b 1
a

7/31/2007

Solution to the Ballot Problem:

a b 1

a b 1

a b a b
a b a

The celebrated reflection method of Andr


MathWorld
I.P. Goulden and Luis G. Serrano, Maintaining the Spirit of the Reflection Principle when
the Boundary has Arbitrary Integer Slope, J. Combinatorial Theory (A) 104 (2003) 317-326.
Andr gave a direct geometric bijection between the subset of bad paths and the set A
of all paths from (1, -1) to (m, n), and the result then follows immediately
J.H. Van Lint and R.M. Wilson, A Course in Combinatorics, Cambridge University Press, 2001.
p. 151: The reflection principle of Fig. 14.2 was used by the French combinatorialist D. Andr
(1840-1917) in his solution of Bertrands famous ballot problem
I. Karatzas and S.E. Shreve, Brownian Motion and Stochastic Calculus, Springer, 1998.
They write Here is the argument of Dsir Andr and proceed with the reflection
method.
H. Bauer, Probability Theory, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin, New York, 1996.
p. 231: In the literature, this reflection principle is usually attributed to D. Andr (1840-1918). It
occurs in the form of such a geometric argument in Andr [1887].
P. Hilton and J. Pedersen, Catalan numbers, their generalizations, and their uses, Math.
Intelligencer. 13 (1991) 6475.
D. Stanton and D. White, Constructive Combinatorics, Springer-Verlag, New York, 1986.
D. Zeilberger, Andrs reflection proof generalized to the many-candidate ballot problem,
Discrete Mathematics 44 (1983) 325-326.

7/31/2007

The celebrated reflection method of Andr


MathWorld
I.P. Goulden and Luis G. Serrano, Maintaining the Spirit of the Reflection Principle when
the Boundary has Arbitrary Integer Slope, J. Combinatorial Theory (A) 104 (2003) 317-326.
Andr gave a direct geometric bijection between the subset of bad paths and the set A
of all paths from (1, -1) to (m, n), and the result then follows immediately
J.H. Van Lint and R.M. Wilson, A Course in Combinatorics, Cambridge University Press, 2001.
p. 151: The reflection principle of Fig. 14.2 was used by the French combinatorialist D. Andr
(1840-1917) in his solution of Bertrands famous ballot problem
I. Karatzas and S.E. Shreve, Brownian Motion and Stochastic Calculus, Springer, 1998.
They write Here is the argument of Dsir Andr and proceed with the reflection
method.
H. Bauer, Probability Theory, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin, New York, 1996.
p. 231: In the literature, this reflection principle is usually attributed to D. Andr (1840-1918). It
occurs in the form of such a geometric argument in Andr [1887].
P. Hilton and J. Pedersen, Catalan numbers, their generalizations, and their uses, Math.
Intelligencer. 13 (1991) 6475.
D. Stanton and D. White, Constructive Combinatorics, Springer-Verlag, New York, 1986.
D. Zeilberger, Andrs reflection proof generalized to the many-candidate ballot problem,
Discrete Mathematics 44 (1983) 325-326.

The problem is

A Recent Discovery
Andr never used
the reflection method!

What Andr did:


1. Count # bad ballot permutations.
2. Subtract that from the total # of permutations to
get # of good permutations.
How Andr counted bad outcomes

7/31/2007

Andrs Actual Method


Ballots are marked with A or B.
Two categories of bad ballot permutations:
Those that start with A

Next slide

Those that start with B

Easy: every permutation starting with B is


bad. There are a (b 1) of these.

Claim:

# of bad permutations
starting with A

= # of all permutations
with a As and (b 1) Bs.
Given a bad permutation
starting with A
Find the first bad B
Remove it
Exchange the two parts

AABBABAA

AAB
ABAA

ABAA
AAB

ABAAAAB

Done!
Now reverse the process

7/31/2007

Claim:

# of bad permutations
starting with A
ABAAAAB

= # of all permutations
with a As and (b 1) Bs.
Given a permutation with a
As and (b 1) Bs
Scan from right until As
exceed Bs (by 1).

ABAA

AAB

AAB

ABAA

AABBABAA

Exchange the two parts


Insert B

Thus

Done!

a (b 1)
a

bads start with A

Bad permutations:
Those that start with A

Those that start with B

a (b 1)
a

Good ballot permutations:

a b
a

a (b 1)
a

a b a b
a b a

No geometry
No reflection (transposing As and Bs)

7/31/2007

The Generalized Ballot Problem


Fix a positive integer k.
How many paths with
a 1-unit upsteps and
b k-unit downsteps have
no step ending on or
below the x-axis?

a kb a b
a
a b

k=3
The reflection method
does not generalize.
Andrs original method
does!

k = 3. Classify bad paths: B0, B1, B2, B3.

A path in B0

A path in B1

A path in B2

A path in B3

7/31/2007

For arbitrary k we create B0, B1, B2,, Bk.


Fact: These sets all have the same size!
By Andrs find-bad-step-remove-it-exchange-twosides trick, each set has size

a (b 1)
a
Thus, the number of bad paths is

(k 1)

a (b 1)
a

Thus, the number of good paths is

a b
a

(k 1)

a (b 1)
a

a kb a b
a
a b

Concluding Thoughts
So where and when did the reflection
method originate?

Aebly 1923?

1915?

When did Andr start getting credit for the


reflection method?
1950s ? Earlier?
http://webspace.ship.edu/msrenault

Lost (and Found) in Translation: Andrs


Actual Method and its Application to the
Generalized Ballot Problem

10

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