Generalising Tuenter's binomial sums

Abstract

Tuenter [Fibonacci Quarterly 40 (2002), 175-180] and other authors have considered centred binomial sums of the form \[S_r(n) = \sum_k \binom{2n}{k}|n-k|^r,\] where $r$ and $n$ are non-negative integers. We consider sums of the form \[U_r(n) = \sum_k \binom{n}{k}|n/2-k|^r\] which are a generalisation of Tuenter's sums as $S_r(n)=U_r(2n)$ but $U_r(n)$ is also well-defined for odd arguments $n$. $U_r(n)$ may be interpreted as a moment of a symmetric Bernoulli random walk with $n$ steps. The form of $U_r(n)$ depends on the parities of both $r$ and $n$. In fact, $U_r(n)$ is the product of a polynomial (depending on the parities of $r$ and $n$) times a power of two or a binomial coefficient. In all cases the polynomials can be expressed in terms of Dumont-Foata polynomials. We give recurrence relations, generating functions and explicit formulas for the functions $U_r(n)$ and/or the associated polynomials.

17 pages, 2 appendices, corrected typos in v2, added OEIS references in v3, corrected abstract in v4

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• Factors of binomial sums from the Catalan triangle
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• Walking into an absolute sum
• Note on a double binomial sum relevant to the Hadamard maximal determinant problem

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Some binomial sums involving absolute values