Combinatorics – Proving Combinatorial Identity (n-r)C(n+r-1,r)C(n,r)=nC(n+r-1,2r)C(2r,r)

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Show that $(n-r) \binom{n+r-1}{r} \binom{n}{r} = n \binom{n+r-1}{2r} \binom{2r}{r}$.

In the LHS $\binom{n+r-1}{r}$ counts the number of ways of selecting $r$ objects from a set of size $n$ where order is not significant and repetitions are allowed. So you have $n$ people you form $r$ teams and select $r$ captains and select $(n-r)$ players.

The RHS divides up a team into 2 sets?

Best Answer

Let $S$ be a set of $n+r-1$ elements. Both sides count the number of ways to select two disjoint sets $A,B\subseteq S$ of size $r$ and possibly an element $c\in S \setminus B$.

We first observe that $(n-r)\binom{n}{r}=n\binom{n-1}{r}$ as both sides count the number of ways to form a team of size $r+1$ with a captain out of $n$ people.

Applying the above on the original LHS we get $n\binom{n-1}{r}\binom{n+r-1}{r}$, which corresponds to selecting $A$ ($r$ out of $n+r-1$), then $B$ ($r$ out of the remaining $n-1$) and $c$ ($n-1$ choices in $S\setminus B$ and one option of not choosing $c$).

The RHS argument goes as follows: choose $2r$ elements for both $A$ and $B$, then choose $r$ of them to make $B$. Then, as before, there are $n$ options of choosing $c\in S\setminus B$ or none at all.