A new Rational Generating Function for the Frobenius Coin Problem

Abstract

An important question arising from the Frobenius Coin Problem is to decide whether or not a given monetary sum S can be obtained from N coin denominations. We develop a new Generating Function G(x), where the coefficient of x^i is equal to the number of ways in which coins from the given denominations can be arranged as a stack whose total monetary worth is i. We show that the Recurrence Relation for obtaining G(x), is linear, enabling G(x) to be expressed as a rational function, that is, G(x) = P(x)/Q(x), where both P(x) and Q(x) are Polynomials whose degrees are bounded by the largest coin denomination.