English

Three short proofs of Mathar's 2014 conjecture for OEIS A002627

Combinatorics 2026-05-18 v1

Abstract

For the OEIS sequence A002627, defined by the inhomogeneous first-order recurrence a(n)=na(n1)+1a(n) = n\,a(n-1) + 1 with a(0)=0a(0) = 0, R.~J.~Mathar recorded in February 2014 the conjectured second-order homogeneous recurrence a(n)(n+1)a(n1)+(n1)a(n2)=0,n2, a(n) - (n+1)\,a(n-1) + (n-1)\,a(n-2) = 0, \qquad n \ge 2, which has remained marked as a conjecture on the OEIS for over a decade. We give three short proofs. The first is two lines: subtract the defining recurrence at adjacent indices and the constant cancels (we call this homogenisation). The second reads off the same relation from the exponential generating function F(x)=(ex1)/(1x)F(x) = (e^x-1)/(1-x). The third is a Pascal-rule telescoping on the binomial-sum form a(m)=k=0m1k!(mk)a(m) = \sum_{k=0}^{m-1} k!\binom{m}{k}. All three derivations are elementary, requiring nothing beyond undergraduate techniques. We remark that the same homogenisation trick clears an entire class of ``Conjecture: \dots'' entries on the OEIS, namely sequences satisfying a(n)=p(n)a(n1)+q(n)a(n) = p(n)\,a(n-1) + q(n) with simple qq.

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Cite

@article{arxiv.2605.15500,
  title  = {Three short proofs of Mathar's 2014 conjecture for OEIS A002627},
  author = {Tong Niu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2605.15500},
  year   = {2026}
}

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11 pages