Central binomial coefficient

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In mathematics the nth central binomial coefficient is defined in terms of the binomial coefficient by

${2n \choose n} = \frac{(2n)!}{(n!)^2}$

They are called central since they show up exactly in the middle of the even numbered rows in Pascal's triangle. The first few central binomial coefficients starting at n = 0 are (sequence A000984 in OEIS):

1, 2, 6, 20, 70, 252, 924, 3432, 12870, 48620, …

These numbers have the generating function

$\frac{1}{\sqrt{1-4x}} = 1 + 2x + 6x^2 + 20x^3 + 70x^4 + 252x^5 + \cdots$

The closely related Catalan numbers C_n are given by:

$C_n = \frac{1}{n+1} {2n \choose n}$

A slight generalization of central binomial coefficients is to take them as ${ m \choose {\lfloor \frac{m}{2} \rfloor} }$ and so the former definition is a particular case when m=2n, that is, when m is even.