That's a lot of squares

j = 0 100 ( 100 j ) 2 = ( m n ) \displaystyle \sum _{ j=0 }^{ 100 }{ {\binom{100}{j} }^{ 2 } } = \binom{m}{n}

If m , n m,n are positive integers that satisfy the equation above, determine the minimum value of m + n m+n .

Image Credit: Wikimedia R. A. Nonenmacher


The answer is 300.

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1 solution

Dylan Pentland
Apr 18, 2015

Consider two sets of n n objects. To choose n n of these objects, we can simply write this as ( 2 n n ) \binom{2n}{n} .

However, we may also consider including 0 0 in what we choose from one group and excluding 0 0 from the other group, including 1 1 and excluding 1 1 , etc. Thus, in total we have j = 0 n ( n j ) 2 \sum _{ j=0 }^{ n }{ {\binom{n}{j} }^{ 2 } } which must be equal to ( 2 n n ) \binom{2n}{n} .

As n = 100 n=100 , the answer is ( 200 100 ) \binom{200}{100} so m + n = 300 m+n=300 . (We may not write this number as a binomial coefficient so that m + n m+n is smaller)

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