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I want to find the generating function for the number of compositions (ordered partitions) of n such that no part is unique ( equivalently, every part appears at least twice). For example: there are 9 such compositions of the integer 6: 3+3, 2+2+2, 2+2+1+1, 2+1+2+1, 2+1+1+2, 1+2+2+1, 1+2+1+2, 1+1+2+2, 1+1+1+1+1+1.

This question is exercise 3.4 page 84 in the text: Combinatorics of Compositions and Words, Sylvia Heubach and Toufik Mansour.

The question actually asks for a bivariate generating function in which the number of parts in such compositions is indicated.

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We can find a bivariate generating function that is exponential in $m$ (the number of parts), and ordinary in $n$. Other variants are harder questions, so I suspect this is what the exercise intended. We use $z$ to mark size ($n$), and $u$ to mark the number of parts ($m$).

Fix $m$, the number of parts. For any positive integer $k$, if we denote by $c_k(n,m)$ the number of compositions of $n$ into $m$ non-unique parts all equal to $k$ (thus $c_k(n,m) = 1$ when $n = mk$ and $m \neq 1$, and $0$ otherwise), then the generating function $$C_k(z, u) = \sum_{m,n \ge 0} c_k(n,m) z^n \frac{u^m}{m!} = \sum_{m \ge 0, m \neq 1} z^{mk} \frac{u^m}{m!} = e^{uz^k} - uz^k$$

When we allow compositions using two integers $k$ and $l$, the corresponding number of compositions $c_{k, l}(n, m)$ forms a binomial convolution, corresponding to which of the $m$ parts are chosen to be equal to $k$, and which equal to $l$: $$c_{k, l}(n, m) = \sum_{a \ge 0} \binom{m}{a} c_k(ak, a) c_l(n - ak, m - a)$$ which corresponds to a product of generating functions: $$C_{k,l}(z, u) = \sum_{m,n \ge 0} c_{k,l}(n,m) z^n \frac{u^m}{m!} = (\exp(uz^k) - uz^k)\cdot (\exp(uz^l) - uz^l)$$

Thus the class of all restricted compositions has generating function $$C(z, u) = \prod_{k=1}^{\infty}\left(\exp(uz^k) - uz^k\right)$$

Further simplification doesn't seem to be possible.

ShreevatsaR
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