Friday, 22 February 2019

sequences and series - Intuition for sum of triangular numbers and significance for 3choosek

Specific question: according to my calculation based on Timbuc's answer to this question,



nk=0k(k+1)2=n(n+1)(2n+4)12=n(n+1)(n+2)6



[Edit: RHS simplified based on suggestion from herbsteinberg.]



If this is right, is there an intuitive or geometric proof of this?




Background and motivation: I'm trying to relate the concepts of integration and summation using reasoning which I find simple and intuitive.



As part of that, I'm trying to understand the process of summing sequences in this rotated section of Pascal's triangle:



(0)010101010101...k00!(1)010203040506...k+01!(2)010306101521...k(k+1)2!(3)010410203556...k(k+1)(k+2)3!



I see that summing each line seems to increase the degree of the expression by 1 and I can imagine that rearrangement, simplification and/or a limit process could later reduce these terms to k22, k33 etc., but for now I'm interested in how/why each line has the exact expression it does.



Line (1) is just counting.




Line (2) I can picture and understand as in Fig. 1 below.



Fig. 1



Triangular numbers



Line (3) [Edited to add the following, which may start to answer my question] I can picture and understand as a stepped version of the right-angled tetraga in Fig. 2 below.



Fig. 2




Tetragonal numbers

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