The inner site-perimeter of bargraphs

Aubrey Blecher1, Charlotte Brennan1, Arnold Knopfmacher1
1The John Knopfmacher Centre for Applicable Analysis and Number Theory, School of Math- ematics, University of the Witwatersrand, Private Bag 3, Wits 2050, Johannesburg, South Africa

Abstract

Bargraphs are column convex polyominoes, where the lower edge lies on a horizontal axis. We consider the inner site-perimeter, which is the total number of cells inside the bargraph that have at least one edge in common with an outside cell and obtain the generating function that counts this statistic. From this we find the average inner perimeter and the asymptotic expression for this average as the semi-perimeter tends to infinity. We finally consider those bargraphs where the inner site-perimeter is exactly equal to the area of the bargraph.