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What is a binomial coefficient?
How are binomial coefficient and Pascal's triangle related?
The binomial coefficient and Pascal's triangle are intimately related, as you can find every binomial coefficient solution in Pascal's triangle, and can construct Pascal's triangle from the binomial coefficient formula. For n choose k, visit the n plus 1-th row of the triangle and find the number at the k-th position for your solution.
What is the symmetry property of binomial coefficients?
You are perhaps confused because we are subtracting then
then
and so on. Instead, you can think of it like this. Take all the subsets of size
from
and take their sum. Then take the generating function for that and remove the largest power of
that you can (which will be
).
For example, with and
we have
$$ \begin{array}{c|c} \text{subset} & \text{sum} \\\hline 123 & 6 \\ 124 & 7 \\ 125 & 8 \\ 134 & 8 \\ 135 & 9 \\ 145 & 10 \\ 234 & 9 \\ 235 & 10 \\ 245 & 11 \\ 345 & 12 \end{array} $$
Subsets aren't ordered so etc. The sum also doesn't care about the order.
Now we take the generating function
which is
This simplifies to
The quantity
is the q-binomial coefficient .
So you want
You have to list all subsets of
of size
which are
of them. For each one, you have to sort them and do the following: Imagine
then
For example, for When you do it for all possible
then the coefficient of
is how many times you got an
in the process.




