From: Robin Chapman <rjc@maths.ex.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: catalan numbers
Date: Tue, 25 May 1999 18:08:09 GMT
Newsgroups: sci.math
To: jmoore@ior.com

In article <7idj7s$hcs$1@hardcore.ivn.net>,
  "joe's news" <jmoore@ior.com> wrote:
> Could someone help me? I am trying to get a clear understanding of Catalan
> Numbers........Where do I even start?

For the basics see Conway & Guy, The Book of Numbers, Springer 1996.
For lots more see Stanley, Enumerative Combinatorics 2,
Cambridge UP, 1999 but the Catlan stuff id available at
http://www-math.mit.edu/~rstan/ec/

Robin Chapman


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From: israel@math.ubc.ca (Robert Israel)
Subject: Re: catalan numbers
Date: 25 May 1999 18:31:54 GMT
Newsgroups: sci.math

In article <7idj7s$hcs$1@hardcore.ivn.net>,
 "joe's news" <jmoore@ior.com> writes:
> Could someone help me? I am trying to get a clear understanding of Catalan
> Numbers........Where do I even start?

Start with the definition: C_n = (2 n choose n)/(n+1) = (2n)!/(n! (n+1)!).

One place you might look is Graham, Knuth and Patashnik's book, 
Concrete Mathematics.

Robert Israel                                israel@math.ubc.ca
Department of Mathematics        http://www.math.ubc.ca/~israel 
University of British Columbia            
Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1Z2