Eventual residue-class bias for unrestricted partitions and related partitions

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Let dn(a,b;m):=pn(a,b,m;0,1)d_n(a,b;m):=p_n(a,b,m;0,1) denote the number of partitions of nn for which the relevant residue-class statistic indexed by aa exceeds that indexed by bb. For positive integers a,b,ma,b,m satisfying 1≤a<b≤m1\le a<b\le m and m≥3m\ge 3, with (a,b,m)≠(1,2,3)(a,b,m)\ne(1,2,3), define the comparison threshold Na,b,mN_{a,b,m} by the eventual inequality below.

Eventual bias conjecture. There exists a constant Na,b,m>0N_{a,b,m}>0 such that

dn(a,b;m)≥dn(b,a;m),for all n≥Na,b,m.d_n(a,b;m)\ge d_n(b,a;m),\qquad\text{for all }n\ge N_{a,b,m}.

Moreover,

Na,m−a,m=0,for all 1≤a<m/2,N_{a,m-a,m}=0,\qquad\text{for all }1\le a<m/2,

except that N2,3,5=45N_{2,3,5}=45, N2,4,6=5N_{2,4,6}=5, N3,4,7=8N_{3,4,7}=8, and N4,5,9=9N_{4,5,9}=9. The conjecture proposes an eventual ordering of the two residue-class counts; the paper motivates it through generating functions and extensive computer experiments, while the general assertion remains open.

References

Primary source

Michael J. Schlosser and Nian Hong Zhou, “Residue class biases in unrestricted partitions, partitions into distinct parts, and overpartitions”, arXiv:2408.14365 (2025).

Additional references

2 papers in this index state this conjecture (2024). The statement above is taken from the most recent of them; the others are arXiv:2404.07485.

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