The maximum of the number of descents and the number of inverse descents. This is, the maximum of [[St000021]] and [[St000354]].

The number of descents of a permutation. This can be described as an occurrence of the vincular mesh pattern ([2,1], {(1,0),(1,1),(1,2)}), i.e., the middle column is shaded, see [3].

The number of descents of a standard tableau. Entry $i$ of a standard Young tableau is a descent if $i+1$ appears in a row below the row of $i$.

The biclique partition number of a graph. The biclique partition number of a graph is the minimum number of pairwise edge disjoint complete bipartite subgraphs so that each edge belongs to exactly one of them. A theorem of Graham and Pollak [1] asserts that the complete graph $K_n$ has biclique partition number $n - 1$.

The width of the tree associated to a permutation. A permutation can be mapped to a rooted tree with vertices $\{0,1,2,\ldots,n\}$ and root $0$ in the following way. Entries of the permutations are inserted one after the other, each child is larger than its parent and the children are in strict order from left to right. Details of the construction are found in [1]. The width of the tree is given by the number of leaves of this tree. Note that, due to the construction of this tree, the width of the tree is always one more than the number of descents [[St000021]]. This also matches the number of runs in a permutation [[St000470]]. See also [[St000308]] for the height of this tree.

The number of runs in a permutation. A run in a permutation is an inclusion-wise maximal increasing substring, i.e., a contiguous subsequence. This is the same as the number of descents plus 1.

The number of recoils of a permutation. A '''recoil''', or '''inverse descent''' of a permutation $\pi$ is a value $i$ such that $i+1$ appears to the left of $i$ in $\pi_1,\pi_2,\dots,\pi_n$. In other words, this is the number of descents of the inverse permutation. It can be also be described as the number of occurrences of the mesh pattern $([2,1], {(0,1),(1,1),(2,1)})$, i.e., the middle row is shaded.

The hat guessing number of a graph. Suppose that each vertex of a graph corresponds to a player, wearing a hat whose color is arbitrarily chosen from a set of $q$ possible colors. Each player can see the hat colors of his neighbors, but not his own hat color. All of the players are asked to guess their own hat colors simultaneously, according to a predetermined guessing strategy and the hat colors they see, where no communication between them is allowed. The hat guessing number $HG(G)$ of a graph $G$ is the largest integer $q$ such that there exists a guessing strategy guaranteeing at least one correct guess for any hat assignment of $q$ possible colors. Because it suffices that a single player guesses correctly, the hat guessing number of a graph is the maximum of the hat guessing numbers of its connected components.

The number of right descents of a signed permutations. An index is a right descent if it is a left descent of the inverse signed permutation.