UW Combinatorics and Geometry Seminar: Jinting Liang

The FKG inequality is a powerful tool for proving inequalities in distributive lattices. We show how a special case, which we call the Order Ideal Lemma, can be used to demonstrate a wide array of log-concavity and log-convexity results in a combinatorial manner. We use the Order Ideal Lemma to prove log-concavity and log-convexity of various sequences involving binomial coefficients, Catalan numbers, Fibonacci numbers, Stirling numbers of the second kind, order polynomials, and more. In the process we define some new and interesting distributive lattices. This is joint work with Bruce Sagan.