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I know how to find the number of solutions to the equation:

$$a_1 + a_2 + \dots + a_k = n$$

where $n$ is a given positive integer and $a_1$, $a_2$, $\dots$, $a_n$ are positive integers. The number of solutions to this equation is:

$$\binom{n - 1}{k - 1}$$

This can be imagined as $n$ balls arranged on a straight line and selecting $k - 1$ gaps from a total of $n - 1$ gaps between them as partition boundaries. The $k - 1$ partition boundaries divide the $n$ balls into $k$ partitions. The number of balls in the $i$th partition is $a_i$.

Now, I don't know how to find the number of solutions to the same equation when we have an additional constraint: $$0 < a_1 \leq a_2 \leq \dots \leq a_k.$$ Could you please help me?

  • 3
    The number of solutions is called the number of partitions of $n$ into $k$ parts. There is no known closed form.2012-03-20
  • 0
    Related: http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/1867469/number-of-integer-triplets-a-b-c-such-that-abc-and-abc-n?noredirect=1&lq=1.2016-12-23

1 Answers 1

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While there is no closed form for the number of partitions of $n$ into $k$ parts, these numbers are not hard to compute. First let's get rid of the awkward initial strict inequality: by setting $a'_i=a_i-1$ we get $0\leq a'_1\leq\cdots\leq a'_k$ and $a'_1+\cdots+a'_k=n-k$. This means we want to count weak partitions of $m=n-k$ into $k$ parts, where weak means the parts can be $0$. Now forming a Young diagram by putting $a'_i$ squares in row $k+1-i$, we are counting Young diagrams with $m$ squares that fit in the first $k$ rows. This is the same as counting Young diagrams with $m$ squares and columns of length at most $k$, or counting partitions of $m$ into parts (arbitrarily many) of size at most $k$.

Now such partition problems have easy generating series. In this case the number we want is the coefficient of $X^m$ in the product of formal power series: $$ \frac1{(1-X)(1-X^2)\cdots(1-X^k)} = \prod_{i=1}^k\frac1{1-X^i}. $$ Multiplying a power series by $\frac1{1-X^i}$ is obtained by adding, in an increasing order, to each coefficient of $X^j$ with $j\geq i$, the coefficient of $X^{j-i}$ (the latter is in general already modified during this run). Thus the following little program (in C++) computes you number in the final entry of the array $c$:

int m = n-k;
vector c(m+1,0); c[0] = 1; // series with m+1 coefs, set to unity
for (int i=1; i<=k; ++i)
  for (int j=i; j<=m; ++j)
    c[j] += c[j-i];
int count = c[m];
  • 0
    What changes if $a_k \color{red}{<} a_{k+1}$?2012-04-07
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    @draks: Then $a_i\geq i$ for all $i$, so one sets $a'_i=a_i-i$ instead, leading to the same reduced problem, but with $m=n-\binom{k+1}2$ instead of $m=n-k$ (assuming of course this number is non-negative, for otherwise there are no solutions).2012-04-08
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    @draks: For additional information on counting partitions with all distinct parts, see this [previous Question and Answer](http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/646705/counting-integer-partitions-of-n-into-exactly-k-distinct-parts-size-at-most-m).2016-05-31