English

Faulhaber's Theorem on Power Sums

Combinatorics 2008-07-28 v2

Abstract

We observe that the classical Faulhaber's theorem on sums of odd powers also holds for an arbitrary arithmetic progression, namely, the odd power sums of any arithmetic progression a+b,a+2b,...,a+nba+b, a+2b, ..., a+nb is a polynomial in na+n(n+1)b/2na+n(n+1)b/2. While this assertion can be deduced from the original Fauhalber's theorem, we give an alternative formula in terms of the Bernoulli polynomials. Moreover, by utilizing the central factorial numbers as in the approach of Knuth, we derive formulas for rr-fold sums of powers without resorting to the notion of rr-reflexive functions. We also provide formulas for the rr-fold alternating sums of powers in terms of Euler polynomials.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.math/0606090,
  title  = {Faulhaber's Theorem on Power Sums},
  author = {William Y. C. Chen and Amy M. Fu and Iris F. Zhang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:math/0606090},
  year   = {2008}
}

Comments

12 pages, revised version, to appear in Discrete Mathematics

R2 v1 2026-07-22T17:36:57.281Z