Second Best, Third Worst, Fourth in Line

Abstract

We investigate decomposable combinatorial labeled structures more fully, focusing on the exp-log class of type a=1 or 1/2. For instance, the modal length of the second longest cycle in a random n-permutation is (0.2350...)n, whereas the modal length of the second smallest component in a random n-mapping is 2 (conjecturally, given n>=434). As in earlier work, our approach is to establish how well existing theory matches experimental data and to raise open questions.