$k$-protected vertices in unlabeled rooted plane trees

Abstract

We find a simple, closed formula for the proportion of vertices which are $k$-protected in all unlabeled rooted plane trees on $n$ vertices. We also find that, as $n$ goes to infinity, the average rank of a random vertex in a tree of size $n$ approaches 0.727649, and the average rank of the root of a tree of size $n$ approaches 1.62297.