Parity biases in partitions and restricted partitions

Koustav Banerjee, Sreerupa Bhattacharjee, Manosij Ghosh Dastidar, Pankaj Jyoti Mahanta, Manjil P. Saikia

Published 2021-11-20, updated 2022-03-29Version 2

Let $p_{o}(n)$ (resp. $p_{e}(n)$) denote the number of partitions of $n$ with more odd parts (resp. even parts) than even parts (resp. odd parts). Recently, Kim, Kim, and Lovejoy proved that $p_{o}(n)>p_{e}(n)$ for all $n>2$ and conjectured that $d_{o}(n)>d_{e}(n)$ for all $n>19$ where $d_{o}(n)$ (resp. $d_{e}(n)$) denote the number of partitions into distinct parts having more odd parts (resp. even parts) than even parts (resp. odd parts). In this paper we provide combinatorial proofs for both the result and the conjecture of Kim, Kim and Lovejoy. In addition, we show that if we restrict the smallest part of the partition to be $2$, then the parity bias is reversed. That is, if $q_{o}(n)$ (resp. $q_{e}(n)$) denote the number of partitions of $n$ with more odd parts (resp. even parts) than even parts (resp. odd parts) where the smallest part is at least $2$, then we have $q_o(n)<q_e(n)$ for all $n>7$. We also look at some more parity biases in partitions with restricted parts.