Friday, 18 July 2014

combinatorics - Inductive Proof for Vandermonde's Identity?



I am reading up on Vandermonde's Identity, and so far I have found proofs for the identity using combinatorics, sets, and other methods. However, I am trying to find a proof that utilizes mathematical induction. Does anyone know of such a proof?




For those who don't know Vandermonde's Identity, here it is:



For every $m \ge 0$, and every $0 \le r \le m$, if $r \le n$, then



$$ \binom{m+n}r = \sum_{k=0}^r \binom mk \binom n{r-k} $$


Answer



We have using the recursion formula for binomial coefficients the following for the induction step
\begin{align*}
\binom{m + (n+1)}r &= \binom{m+n}r + \binom{m+n}{r-1}\\
&= \sum_{k=0}^r \binom mk\binom n{r-k} + \sum_{k=0}^{r-1} \binom mk\binom{n}{r-1-k}\\

&= \binom mr + \sum_{k=0}^{r-1} \binom mk\biggl(\binom n{r-k} + \binom n{r-1-k}\biggr)\\
&= \binom mr\binom{n+1}0 + \sum_{k=0}^{r-1} \binom mk\binom{n+1}{r-k}\\
&= \sum_{k=0}^r \binom mk \binom{n+1}{r-k}
\end{align*}


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