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Fast computation of binomial coefficients

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Abstract

One problem that arises in computation involving large numbers is precision. In certain situations, the result might be represented by the standard data type, but arithmetic precision might be compromised when dealing with large numbers in the course to the result. Binomial coefficients are an example that suffer from this torment. In the present paper, we review numerical methods to compute the binomial coefficients: Pascal’s recursive method; prime factorization to cancel out terms; gamma function approximation; and a simplified iterative method that avoids loss in precision. Acknowledging that the binomial coefficients might be obtained by a successive convolution of a simple discrete rectangular function, we propose a different approach based on the discrete Fourier transform and another based on its fast implementation. We analyze and compare performance and precision of all of them. The proposed methods overcome the previous ones when computing all coefficients for a given level n, attaining better precision for large values of n.

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Notes

  1. https://github.com/leolca/bincoeff

  2. We have also tested the minimum, which gave similar result.

  3. Octave documentation states that “by default numeric constants are represented within Octave by IEEE 754 double precision (binary64) floating-point format” [1] which uses 1 bit for sign, 11 to represent the exponent and 52 to the significant (53-bit precision) [12].

  4. The bigfloat package in Python is a wrapper for the GNU MPFR library for arbitrary-precision floating-point reliable arithmetic.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Universidade Federal de Sao Joao del-Rei, Ouro Branco, Minas Gerais, Brazil

    Leonardo C. Araujo, João P. H. Sansão & Adriano S. Vale-Cardoso

Authors
  1. Leonardo C. Araujo
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  2. João P. H. Sansão
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  3. Adriano S. Vale-Cardoso
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Correspondence to Leonardo C. Araujo.

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Araujo, L.C., Sansão, J.P.H. & Vale-Cardoso, A.S. Fast computation of binomial coefficients. Numer Algor 86, 799–812 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11075-020-00912-x

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