Expression for binomial coefficient denominator I'm trying to find an analytical expression for the

Nylah Burnett

Nylah Burnett

Answered question

2022-05-21

Expression for binomial coefficient denominator
I'm trying to find an analytical expression for the denominator of ( 1 / 2 k ) in terms of k when the fraction is fully reduced.
E.g., the first several such denominators, starting with k = 0, are
1 , 2 , 8 , 16 , 128 , 256 , 1024 , 2048 , 32768 so there are various power-of-2 jumps, but I haven't been able to figure out the overall pattern so that I can nail down the expression.
Does anyone know of such an expression, or know of a good place to look to try to figure this out? If not, does anyone know if this is a fool's errand?
Thanks for any help.

Answer & Explanation

wayembesail

wayembesail

Beginner2022-05-22Added 10 answers

This is integer sequence A046161 in the On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences.
You can find several formulas and details there.
vamosacaminarzi

vamosacaminarzi

Beginner2022-05-23Added 1 answers

We have
A result of Kummer states that the highest power of 2 dividing ( 2 k k ) is the number of carries when adding n to itself in base 2, which in this case is easily seen to be the number of 1s in the binary representation of k. Hence the answer is 2 2 k | k | 2 , where | k | 2 is the number of 1s in the binary representation of k.

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