Divisibility of binomial coefficients by powers of two

Abstract

For nonnegative integers $j$ and $n$ let $\Theta(j,n)$ be the number of entries in the $n$-th row of Pascal's triangle that are not divisible by $2^{j+1}$. In this paper we prove that the family $j\mapsto\Theta(j,n)$ usually follows a normal distribution. The method used for proving this theorem involves the computation of first and second moments of $\Theta(j,n)$, and uses asymptotic analysis of multivariate generating functions by complex analytic methods, building on earlier work by Drmota (1994) and Drmota, Kauers and Spiegelhofer (2016).