A241600 Number of ways of arranging n lines in the (affine) plane.

1, 1, 2, 4, 9, 47, 791, 37830

Offset

0,3

Comments

This is in the affine plane, rather than the projective plane, so lines are either parallel or meet in one point.

Two arrangements are considered the same if one can be continuously changed to the other while keeping all lines straight, without changing the multiplicity of intersection points, and without a line passing through an intersection point. Turning over is also allowed.

a(n) might be called the size of the moduli space of n lines in the affine plane.

The subsequence giving the number of arrangements G_n of n lines in "general position" (with every two lines meeting in one point and every intersection point lying on exactly two lines) is given by A090338.

The moduli space of n points in the affine plane has been studied by several people (see for example Haiman and Miller, 2004; Martin, 2003). There is no direct connection with this problem, but these references are included for background information. - N. J. A. Sloane, Sep 13 2014

Lukas Finschi points out (email, Sep 19 2014) that a(n) = A063859(n)+1 for n <= 7 (but not for larger n). - N. J. A. Sloane, Sep 20 2014

References

B. Grünbaum, Arrangements and Spreads. American Mathematical Society, Providence, RI, 1972, p. 4.

Links

Table of n, a(n) for n=0..7.

Lukas Finschi, Homepage of Oriented Matroids

L. Finschi and K. Fukuda, Complete combinatorial generation of small point set configurations and hyperplane arrangements, pp. 97-100 in Abstracts 13th Canadian Conference on Computational Geometry (CCCG '01), Waterloo, Aug. 13-15, 2001.

Komei Fukuda, Hiroyuki Miyata, and Sonoko Moriyama Complete Enumeration of Small Realizable Oriented Matroids, arXiv:1204.0645 [math.CO], 2012; Discrete Comput. Geom. 49 (2013), no. 2, 359--381. MR3017917. (Further background information.)

Mark Haiman, with an Appendix by Ezra Miller, Commutative algebra of n points in the plane. Trends Commut. Algebra, MSRI Publ 51 (2004): 153-180. (Background)

J. L. Martin, The slopes determined by n points in the plane. (Background)

Jeremy L. Martin, The slopes determined by n points in the plane, arXiv:math/0302106 [math.AG], 2003-2006; Duke Math. J. 131 (2006), no. 1, 119-165. (Background)

N. J. A. Sloane, Illustration of a(1)-a(5)

N. J. A. Sloane, Exciting Number Sequences (video of talk), Mar 05 2021.

N. J. A. Sloane, The On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences (2015 talk slides)

Formula

a(n) >= A000041(n). - Pablo Hueso Merino, May 10 2021

Example

Let P_n = n parallel lines, S_n = star of n lines through a point, G_n = n lines in general position, L = P_1 = S_1 = G_1 = a single line.
a(1) = 1: L.
a(2) = 2: P_2, S_2.
a(3) = 4: P_3, P_2 L, S_3, G_3.
See link for illustrations of first 5 terms.

Crossrefs

Cf. A090338 (lines in general position), A090339 (curved lines in general position), A250001 (circles).

Cf. also A063859, A003036, A048872, A048873, A132346.

Sequence in context: A005204 A204428 A162111 * A162112 A162113 A162114

Adjacent sequences: A241597 A241598 A241599 * A241601 A241602 A241603

Keyword

nonn,more

Author

Max Alekseyev and N. J. A. Sloane, May 15 2014

Extensions

a(6) and a(7) from Lukas Finschi, Sep 19 2014

Status

approved