A Note on the Fibonacci Sequence and Schreier-type Sets

TL;DR

This paper explores Schreier sets and their connection to Fibonacci numbers, providing a bijective proof for a recurrence relation and offering a new combinatorial interpretation of a related sequence.

Contribution

It introduces a bijective map to prove the recurrence of specific set counts and links Schreier sets to Fibonacci numbers and related sequences.

Findings

Established a recurrence relation for set counts using bijection

Connected Schreier sets to Fibonacci sequence

Provided a new combinatorial interpretation for F_n + n

Abstract

A set $A$ of positive integers is said to be Schreier if either $A = \emptyset$ or $\min A\ge |A|$. We give a bijective map to prove the recurrence of the sequence $(|\mathcal{K}_{n, p, q}|)_{n=1}^\infty$ (for fixed $p\ge 1$ and $q\ge 2$), where $$\mathcal{K}_{n, p, q} \ = \ \{A\subset \{1, \ldots, n\}\,:\, \mbox{either }A = \emptyset \mbox{ or } (\max A-\max_2 A = p\mbox{ and }\min A\ge |A|\ge q)\}$$ and $\max_2 A$ is the second largest integer in $A$, given that $|A|\ge 2$. When $p = 1$ and $q=2$, we have that $(|\mathcal{K}_{n, 1, 2}|)_{n=1}^\infty$ is the Fibonacci sequence. As a corollary, we obtain a new combinatorial interpretation for the sequence $(F_n + n)_{n=1}^\infty$.