login

Year-end appeal: Please make a donation to the OEIS Foundation to support ongoing development and maintenance of the OEIS. We are now in our 61st year, we have over 378,000 sequences, and we’ve reached 11,000 citations (which often say “discovered thanks to the OEIS”).

A069918
Number of ways of partitioning the set {1...n} into two subsets whose sums are as nearly equal as possible.
7
1, 1, 1, 1, 3, 5, 4, 7, 23, 40, 35, 62, 221, 397, 361, 657, 2410, 4441, 4110, 7636, 28460, 53222, 49910, 93846, 353743, 668273, 632602, 1199892, 4559828, 8679280, 8273610, 15796439, 60400688, 115633260, 110826888, 212681976, 817175698, 1571588177, 1512776590
OFFSET
1,5
COMMENTS
If n mod 4 = 0 or 3, a(n) is the number of solutions to +- 1 +- 2 +- 3 +- ... +- n = 0 or 1; if n mod 4 = 1 or 2, a(n) is half this number.
LINKS
Steven R. Finch, Signum equations and extremal coefficients, February 7, 2009. [Cached copy, with permission of the author]
Brian Hayes, The Easiest Hard Problem, American Scientist, Vol. 90, No. 2, March-April 2002, pp. 113-117.
Recreational Mathematics Newsletter, Kolstad, PROBLEM 4: Subset Sums [broken link]
Dave Rusin, More Number Theory [broken link]
FORMULA
If n mod 4 = 0 or 3 then the two subsets have the same sum and a(n) = A025591(n); if n mod 4 = 1 or 2 then the two subsets have sums which differ by 1 and a(n) = A025591(n)/2. - Henry Bottomley, May 08 2002
EXAMPLE
If the triangular number T_n (see A000217) is even then the two totals must be equal, otherwise the two totals differ by one.
a(6) = 5: T6 = 21 and is odd. There are five sets such that the sum of one side is equal to the other side +/- 1. They are 5+6 = 1+2+3+4, 4+6 = 1+2+3+5, 1+4+6 = 2+3+5, 1+3+6 = 2+4+5 and 2+3+6 = 1+4+5.
MAPLE
b:= proc(n, i) option remember; local m; m:= i*(i+1)/2;
`if`(n>m, 0, `if`(n=m, 1, b(abs(n-i), i-1) +b(n+i, i-1)))
end:
a:= n-> `if`(irem(n-1, 4)<2, b(n-1, n-1) +b(n+1, n-1), b(n, n-1)):
seq(a(n), n=1..60); # Alois P. Heinz, Nov 02 2011
MATHEMATICA
Needs["DiscreteMath`Combinatorica`"]; f[n_] := f[n] = Block[{s = Sort[Plus @@@ Subsets[n]], k = n(n + 1)/2}, If[ EvenQ[k], Count[s, k/2]/2, (Count[s, Floor[k/2]] + Count[s, Ceiling[k/2]]) /2]]; Table[ f[n], {n, 1, 22}]
f[n_, s_] := f[n, s] = Which[n == 0, If[s == 0, 1, 0], Abs[s] > (n*(n + 1))/2, 0, True, f[n - 1, s - n] + f[n - 1, s + n]]; Table[ Which[ Mod[n, 4] == 0 || Mod[n, 4] == 3, f[n, 0]/2, Mod[n, 4] == 1 || Mod[n, 4] == 2, f[n, 1]], {n, 1, 40}]
KEYWORD
nonn
AUTHOR
Robert G. Wilson v, Apr 24 2002
EXTENSIONS
More terms from Henry Bottomley, May 08 2002
Comment corrected by Steven Finch, Feb 01 2009
STATUS
approved