Wednesday, 16 July 2014

summation - Double sum of binomial coefficients quotients



How to prove the following formula?



\sum_{j=0}^{n-1} \sum_{k=0}^{j} \frac{{n}\choose{k}}{{n-1}\choose{j}} = 2^{n-1}\sum_{j=0}^{n-1} \frac{1}{{n-1}\choose{j}}



I tried induction and manipulating the binomial coefficients but couldn't prove it. I also tried to write the term 2^{n-1} as \sum_{k=0}^{n-1} {{n-1}\choose{k}}. That's a nice structure at least: sum of the binomial coefficients times the sum of their reciprocals. But how do we "cut" the inner sum at j and turn n-1 in the numerator into n?


Answer



Notice that




\sum_{k=0}^{j} \binom{n}{k} = 2^n - \sum_{k=j+1}^{n} \binom{n}{k} = 2^n - \sum_{k=j+1}^{n} \binom{n}{n-k} \stackrel{(k\to n-k)}{=} 2^n - \sum_{k=0}^{n-1-j} \binom{n}{k}.



Plugging this back,




= \sum_{j=0}^{n-1} \frac{\sum_{k=0}^{j} \binom{n}{k}}{\binom{n-1}{j}} = \sum_{j=0}^{n-1} \frac{2^n - \sum_{k=0}^{n-j-1} \binom{n}{k}}{\binom{n-1}{n-1-j}} \stackrel{(j\to n-1-j)}{=} \sum_{j=0}^{n-1} \frac{2^n - \sum_{k=0}^{j} \binom{n}{k}}{\binom{n-1}{j}}.



Therefore the result follows by averaging the left-hand side and the right-hand side.


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