A combinatorial proof of Sun's "curious" identity

David Callan

Published 2004-01-18Version 1

A binomial coefficient identity due to Zhi-Wei Sun is the subject of half a dozen recent papers that prove it by various analytic techniques and establish a generalization. Here we give a simple proof that uses weight-reversing involutions on suitable configurations involving dominos and colorings. With somewhat more work, the method extends to the generalization also.