Why Delannoy numbers?
Abstract
This article is not a research paper, but a little note on the history of combinatorics: We present here a tentative short biography of Henri Delannoy, and a survey of his most notable works. This answers to the question raised in the title, as these works are related to lattice paths enumeration, to the so-called Delannoy numbers, and were the first general way to solve Ballot-like problems. These numbers appear in probabilistic game theory, alignments of DNA sequences, tiling problems, temporal representation models, analysis of algorithms and combinatorial structures.
Cite
@article{arxiv.math/0411128,
title = {Why Delannoy numbers?},
author = {Cyril Banderier and Sylviane Schwer},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:math/0411128},
year = {2014}
}
Comments
Presented to the conference "Lattice Paths Combinatorics and Discrete Distributions" (Athens, June 5-7, 2002) and to appear in the Journal of Statistical Planning and Inferences