Two-sided Eulerian numbers via balls in boxes

The Eulerian numbers count permutations according to the number of descents. The two-sided Eulerian numbers count permutations according to number of descents and the number of descents in the inverse permutation. Here we derive some results for Eulerian and two-sided Eulerian numbers using an elementary “balls-in-boxes” approach. We also discuss an open conjecture of Ira Gessel about the two-sided Eulerian numbers.