Six Permutation Patterns Force Quasirandomness

Abstract

A sequence $π_1,π_2,\dots$ of permutations is said to be "quasirandom" if the induced density of every permutation $σ$ in $π_n$ converges to $1/|σ|!$ as $n\to\infty$. We prove that $π_1,π_2,\dots$ is quasirandom if and only if the density of each permutation $σ$ in the set $$\{123,321,2143,3412,2413,3142\}$$ converges to $1/|σ|!$. Previously, the smallest cardinality of a set with this property, called a "quasirandom-forcing" set, was known to be between four and eight. In fact, we show that there is a single linear expression of the densities of the six permutations in this set which forces quasirandomness and show that this is best possible in the sense that there is no shorter linear expression of permutation densities with positive coefficients with this property. In the language of theoretical statistics, this expression provides a new nonparametric independence test for bivariate continuous distributions related to Spearman's $ρ$.