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# Trivial bounds on binomial coefficients #8462

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opened this Issue Nov 17, 2014 · 5 comments

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### pelegm commented Nov 17, 2014

 This is a suggestion; I am ready to implement it, but I'll need a hint about how possible/easy it might be, and where to start. In #5415 it is reported that limits of expressions involving function of several arguments, such as binomial(n, k), fail. Perhaps trivial bounds on binomial coefficients may help to solve this issue for the case where all such functions are binomial coefficients. The trivial bounds are \left(\frac{n}{k}\right)^k \le {n\choose k} \le \left(\frac{en}{k}\right)^k Here's an illustration: limit(binomial(n, n/2), n, oo) fail with MRV set computation for functions in several variables not implemented.. But using the lower bound, we know that binomial(n, n/2) is at least 2**(n/2), and SymPy knows that the limit of this is infinity. Similarly, limit(binomial(n, n/2) * 3 ** (-n), n, oo) fails, but the trivial upper bound yields that binomial(n, n/2) is at most (2*E)**(n/2), and since the expression is positive, the limit is 0 (as limit((2*E)**(n/2) * 3**(-n), n, oo) shows).
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### certik commented Nov 17, 2014

 The limit code is using the Gruntz algorithm. I don't know if it can be extended for binomial expressions. If it can, that would be awesome.
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### pelegm commented Nov 18, 2014

 Well, it seems that if you just replace the binomial with its definition using factorials, gruntz handles it quite well.

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### skirpichev commented Nov 18, 2014

 Probably, you can add the _eval_rewrite_as_tractable helper.
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### pelegm commented Nov 18, 2014

 Could you elaborate?
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### skirpichev commented Nov 18, 2014

 Read the Gruntz thesis, ch. 5.

### skirpichev added a commit to diofant/diofant that referenced this issue Dec 26, 2015

 Add binomial._eval_rewrite_as_tractable 
Fixes sympy/sympy#8462
 af6eb32 
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