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I'm trying to make sense of the answer given in: this question

I am stuck at the phrase 'where the partitions $\gamma$ result from adding, respectively, from $\alpha$ all distinct partitions obtained by permuting in all possible ways the parts of $\beta$.'

If I permute (in all possible ways) the parts of a partition, then I obtain a set of integers that is not weakly decreasing anymore; adding that part-by-part to a proper partition does again not conserve the property 'weakly decreasing'.

Q: how should I interpret this?

Yet, there is a tempting structure in this product decomposition that I would like to understand.

Example: $m[1,1]^2= m[2,2]+2 m[2,1,1]+6 m[1,1,1,1]$ (* using 4 variables *)

added 19/05/2013 15:42 CET: @MarcVanLeeuwen: thanks Marc, I got it now. The 'Dim' function was new to me, it turns out to be just the multinomial of the contents (of the zero-padded partitions).

  • You should "ping" the user who wrote that answer by writing a comment to the answer pointing to this question. Meanwhile, the most probable interpretation is that "respectively, from" should be "to" (so only addition occurs) and that after the addition you reorder the parts decreasingly. – Marc van Leeuwen May 19 '13 at 13:32
  • Oops, I forgot that you haven't got the reputation require to comment under other people's questions and answers. You can comment to your own question though, I'll do the pinging here to show you how. – Marc van Leeuwen May 19 '13 at 13:37
  • If you are interested, I updated my post with a full reference... – draks ... May 19 '13 at 21:33
  • Your description of Dim seems wrong, at least if you talk about multinomial coefficients. Instead it is a product of factorials, for the multiplicities of repeated parts in the partition; this includes a factorial for the parts $0$ that were added to get the required number of parts (matching the number of indeterminates), and in particular the number depends on the number of indeterminates. See my answer. For instance for $[4,2,2,1,1,1]$ and $11$ indeterminates the Dim number is $1!0!2!3!5!$. – Marc van Leeuwen May 24 '13 at 06:45

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It is natural to try to manipulate symmetric polynomials as one does polynomials, representing them as a sum of monomials, and to take advantage of the symmetry by representing a whole orbit of monomials only once, as a minimal symmetric polynomial$~m_\lambda$. Also one can now leave the number of indeterminates unspecified, and thus effectively manipulate symmetric functions. This being said, I should warn that the algorithms resulting form this head-on approach to symmetric functions are neither particularly beautiful nor efficient; representation on other bases with more pleasant theoretical properties seems preferable.

Anyway, the best way to understand the multiplication of $m_\mu$ and $m_\nu$ is to try deriving the rule for the coefficients yourself, since only this gives you the right feeling for what kind of complications are needed; reading a ready-made description of the multiplication risks misinterpreting the subtle notions involved. Here I will try to deduce the rule. The first thing to realise it that if $l(\lambda)$ denotes the number of nonzero parts of$~\lambda$, then in the product of symmetric functions $m_\mu m_\nu$ one get terms $m_\lambda$ with $l(\lambda)$ going up to $l(\mu)+l(\nu)$, so one should consider at least that number of indeterminates to faithfully represent that product as a polynomial. If you are only interested in multipliying symmetric polynomials in a fixed number of indeterminates one can of course use that number, which amounts to ignoring the $m_\lambda$ where $l(\lambda)$ exceeds that number.

If $n$ is the number of indeterminates used, it is useful to consider scalar multiples of the $m_\lambda$ obtained by a sum over the whole group $S_n$, namely $$M_\lambda(n)=c(\lambda,n)m_\lambda=\sum_{\pi\in S_n}X^{\pi(\lambda)},$$ where $\def\N{\mathbf N}\pi(\lambda)\in\N^n$ is the result of permuting the parts of$~\lambda$ (including $n-l(\lambda)$ parts zero) by $\pi$; the number $c(\lambda,n)$ is the size of the stabiliser of $\lambda$ in this action, the product of the factorials of the multiplicities of the distinct parts of $\lambda$, including $(n-l(\lambda))!$ for the parts equal to $0$ involved. Now clearly $$ M_\mu(n)M_\nu(n)=\sum_{\pi,\sigma\in S_n}X^{\pi(\mu)+\sigma(\nu)} =\sum_\lambda C^\lambda_{\mu,\nu}M_\lambda(n), $$ and once these coefficients $C^\lambda_{\mu,\nu}$ are determined one deduces that $$ m_\mu m_\nu=\sum_\lambda c^\lambda_{\mu,\nu}m_\lambda,\qquad \text{where } c^\lambda_{\mu,\nu}=\frac{c(\lambda,n)}{c(\mu,n)c(\nu,n)}C^\lambda_{\mu,\nu}. $$ The defining equation for the coefficients $C^\lambda_{\mu,\nu}$ is $$ \sum_\lambda C^\lambda_{\mu,\nu}\sum_{\pi\in S_n}X^{\pi(\lambda)} =\sum_{\pi,\sigma\in S_n}X^{\pi(\mu)+\sigma(\nu)} =\sum_{\pi,\sigma\in S_n}X^{\pi(\mu+\pi^{-1}(\sigma(\nu)))}, $$ which by symmetry can be simplified to $$ \sum_\lambda C^\lambda_{\mu,\nu}X^\lambda =\sum_{\rho\in S_n}X^{(\mu+\rho(\nu))^+}, $$ where for a composition $\alpha$ the notation $\alpha^+$ means that partition obtained by sorting its parts decreasingly. Now we can simplify this further by factoring the stabiliser subgroup of $\nu$, to $$ \sum_\lambda \frac{C^\lambda_{\mu,\nu}}{c(\nu,n)}X^\lambda =\sum_{\alpha\in S_n(\nu)}X^{(\mu+\alpha)^+}, $$ where $S_n(\nu)$ is the permutation orbit, without repetitions. In the end, the recipe is $$ c^\lambda_{\mu,\nu}=\frac{c(\lambda,n)}{c(\mu,n)}c'(\lambda,\mu,\nu) \quad\text{where}\quad \sum_{\alpha\in S_n(\nu)}X^{(\mu+\alpha)^+}=\sum_\lambda c'(\lambda,\mu,\nu)X^\lambda; $$ the right hand side asks for adding all distinct permutations of $\nu$ (which was padded with zero) to $\mu$, sorting the results decreasingly and grouping by equal outcome$~\lambda$.