The number of stack-sorts needed to sort a permutation.
A permutation is (West) $t$-stack sortable if it is sortable using $t$ stacks in series.
Let $W_t(n,k)$ be the number of permutations of size $n$
with $k$ descents which are $t$-stack sortable. Then the polynomials $W_{n,t}(x) = \sum_{k=0}^n W_t(n,k)x^k$
are symmetric and unimodal.
We have $W_{n,1}(x) = A_n(x)$, the Eulerian polynomials. One can show that $W_{n,1}(x)$ and $W_{n,2}(x)$ are real-rooted.
Precisely the permutations that avoid the pattern $231$ have statistic at most $1$, see [3]. These are counted by $\frac{1}{n+1}\binom{2n}{n}$ (OEIS:A000108). Precisely the permutations that avoid the pattern $2341$ and the barred pattern $3\bar 5241$ have statistic at most $2$, see [4]. These are counted by $\frac{2(3n)!}{(n+1)!(2n+1)!}$ (OEIS:A000139).

Return the Dyck path of the corresponding ordered tree induced by the recurrence of the Catalan numbers, see wikipedia:Catalan_number.
This sends the maximal height of the Dyck path to the depth of the tree.

Krattenthaler's bijection to 321-avoiding permutations.
Draw the path of semilength $n$ in an $n\times n$ square matrix, starting at the upper left corner, with right and down steps, and staying below the diagonal. Then the permutation matrix is obtained by placing ones into the cells corresponding to the peaks of the path and placing ones into the remaining columns from left to right, such that the row indices of the cells increase.