BIASES IN INTEGER PARTITIONS

Abstract

We show that there are biases in the number of appearances of the parts in two residue classes in the set of ordinary partitions. More precisely, let p(j,k,m)(n) be the number of partitions of n such that there are more parts congruent to j modulo m than parts congruent to k modulo m for m >= 2. We prove that p(1,0,m)(n) is in general larger than p(0,)(1,m)(n). We also obtain asymptotic formulas for p(1,0,m)(n) and p(0,)(1,m)(n) for m >= 2.