2026-07-072026-07-07http://salesiana.dossiersoluciones.com/handle/123456789/95175Let the sign of a standard Young tableau be the sign of the permutation you get by reading it row by row from left to right, like a book. A conjecture by Richard Stanley says that the sum of the signs of all SYTs with n squares is 2^[n/2]. We present a stronger theorem with a purely combinatorial proof using the Robinson-Schensted correspondence and a new concept called chess tableaux. We also prove a sharpening of another conjecture by Stanley concerning weighted sums of squares of sign-imbalances. The proof is built on a remarkably simple relation between the sign of a permutation and the signs of its RS-corresponding tableaux.12 pages. Better presentationCombinatorics06A07; 05E10text