A ladder lottery, known as “Amidakuji” in Japan, is one of the most popular lotteries. In this paper, we consider the problems of enumeration, counting, and random generation of the ladder lotteries. For given two positive integers n and b, we give algorithms of enumeration, counting, and random generation of ladder lotteries with n lines and b bars. The running time of the enumeration algorithm is O(n + b) time for each. The running time of the counting algorithm is O(nb3) time. The random generation algorithm takes O(nb3) time for preprocess, and then it generates a ladder lottery in O(n + b) for each uniformly at random.

A ladder lottery, known as the “Amidakuji” in Japan, is a network with n vertical lines and many horizontal lines each of which connects two consecutive vertical lines. Each ladder lottery corresponds to a permutation. Ladder lotteries are frequently used as natural models in many areas. Given a permutation π, an algorithm to enumerate all ladder lotteries of π with the minimum number of horizontal lines is known. In this paper, given a permutation π and an integer k, we design an algorithm to enumerate all ladder lotteries of π with exactly k horizontal lines.