Fixed Point Homing Shuffles

We study a family of maps from $S_n \to S_n$ we call fixed point homing shuffles. These maps generalize a few known problems such as Conway's Topswops, and a card shuffling process studied by Gweneth McKinley. We show that the iterates of these homing shuffles always converge, and characterize the set $U_n$ of permutations that no homing shuffle sorts. We also study a homing shuffle that sorts anything not in $U_n$, and find how many iterations it takes to converge in the worst case. Updated formatting to fit with DMTCS requirements

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Publication Details

Journal
Discrete Mathematics & Theoretical Computer Science
Published
2025-08-18
DOI
https://doi.org/10.46298/dmtcs.14653
Primary Topic
Mathematics and Applications
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
0.00

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article

Fixed Point Homing Shuffles

Jonathan Parlett
Discrete Mathematics & Theoretical Computer Science
Mathematics and Applications
article

Fixed Point Homing Shuffles

Jonathan Parlett
article en

Abstract

We study a family of maps from $S_n \to S_n$ we call fixed point homing shuffles. These maps generalize a few known problems such as Conway's Topswops, and a card shuffling process studied by Gweneth McKinley. We show that the iterates of these homing shuffles always converge, and characterize the set $U_n$ of permutations that no homing shuffle sorts. We also study a homing shuffle that sorts anything not in $U_n$, and find how many iterations it takes to converge in the worst case. Updated formatting to fit with DMTCS requirements

Discrete Mathematics & Theoretical Computer ScienceVol. vol. 27:1, Permutation...(Special issues)
Drexel University (US)
Drexel University
Openalex Percentile: Top 73%
Mathematics and Applications
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