Sunday, 14 September 2014

combinatorics - identity on Pascal's triangle modulo 2



Consider Pascal's triangle with entries modulo 2, and let (k,l) denote the l-th entry in the k-th row by (k,l).




Show that, for all nN, each entry of the triangle with vertices (0,0), (2n1,0), (2n1,2n1) is mapped via the translation (k,l)(2n+k,l) to an equal entry (modulo 2), i.e. the translation preserves the triangle entries modulo 2.



This explains the "nice pattern" of Pascal's triangle modulo 2. Since Pascal's triangle simply shows the binomial coefficients, another way to state this is:



Let k,l{0,,2n1} such that lk, and let nN. Then it holds



(kl)(2n+kl)mod2.



I am searching for an elementary proof for this (perhaps by induction, but I got stuck trying this).


Answer




Note that
(2n+kl)=li=0(2ni)(kli).


Now, since il2n1<2n, it follows that if i>0 then 2(2ni), so that modulo 2 we get
(2n+kl)(2n0)(kl)=(kl)mod2.


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