De Finetti Lattices and Magog Triangles

Abstract

The order ideal $B_{n,2}$ of the Boolean lattice $B_n$ consists of all subsets of size at most $2$. Let $F_{n,2}$ denote the poset refinement of $B_{n,2}$ induced by the rules: $i < j$ implies $\{i \} \prec \{ j \}$ and $\{i,k \} \prec \{j,k\}$. We give an elementary bijection from the set $\mathcal{F}_{n,2}$ of linear extensions of $F_{n,2}$ to the set of shifted standard Young tableau of shape $(n, n-1, \ldots, 1)$, which are counted by the strict-sense ballot numbers. We find a more surprising result when considering the set $\mathcal{F}_{n,2}^{1}$ of minimal poset refinements in which each singleton is comparable with all of the doubletons. We show that $\mathcal{F}_{n,2}^{1}$ is in bijection with magog triangles, and therefore is equinumerous with alternating sign matrices. We adopt our proof techniques to show that row reversal of an alternating sign matrix corresponds to a natural involution on gog triangles.