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A set partition is noncrossing if whenever four elements $a<b<c<d$ are such that $a,c$ are in the same block and $b,d$ are in the same block then $a,b,c,d$ are all in the same block.

Can I get a list of noncrossing set partitions.

With "Combinatorica" I can get ALL the set partitions (say of {1,2,3,4}) with the command SetPartitions[4].

What I want is this list without the element {{1,3},{2,4}} which is not noncrossing.

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2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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Needs["Combinatorica`"]

ClearAll[nonCrossingSetPartitions]
nonCrossingSetPartitions = 
    DeleteCases[{___, {___, a_, ___, c_, ___}, ___, {___, b_, ___, d_, ___}, ___} /;
       a < b < c < d] @* SetPartitions;

nonCrossingSetPartitions @ 4 // Column

enter image description here

nonCrossingSetPartitions @ 5 // Length

42

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  • $\begingroup$ There should be 42 noncrossing partitions of [5]. $\endgroup$
    – geoffrey
    Commented Sep 22, 2020 at 20:05
  • $\begingroup$ thank you @geoffrey. Updated with a fix. $\endgroup$
    – kglr
    Commented Sep 22, 2020 at 21:07
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I have a Mathematica package for generating Catalan objects on GitHub, so I have some recursive algorithm which generates what you want. Moreover, it has a nice graphical representation of these, and some operations on these, such as rotation.

Just download the package, and do

Needs["CatalanObjects`"]
Last /@ NonCrossingPartitions[4]

to get

{{{1, 2, 3, 4}}, {{3}, {1, 2, 4}}, {{2}, {1, 3, 4}}, {{1, 4}, {2, 
   3}}, {{2}, {3}, {1, 4}}, {{1}, {2, 3, 4}}, {{1}, {3}, {2, 4}}, {{1,
    2}, {3, 4}}, {{1}, {2}, {3, 4}}, {{4}, {1, 2, 3}}, {{2}, {4}, {1, 
   3}}, {{1}, {4}, {2, 3}}, {{3}, {4}, {1, 2}}, {{1}, {2}, {3}, {4}}}

If you do not want everything in the package, it should be easy to extract the method.

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  • $\begingroup$ Useful package, did you ever implemented this? $\endgroup$
    – matrix42
    Commented Jul 14, 2022 at 8:19
  • $\begingroup$ @matrix89 I usually use the subsets function for that. $\endgroup$
    – Per Alexandersson
    Commented Jul 14, 2022 at 13:12

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