Counting odd numbers in truncations of Pascal's triangle

Abstract

A "truncation" of Pascal's triangle is a triangular array of numbers that satisfies the usual Pascal recurrence but with a boundary condition that declares some terminal set of numbers along each row of the array to be zero. Presented here is a family of natural truncations of Pascal's triangle that generalize a kind of Catalan triangle. The numbers in each array are realized as differences of binomial coefficients, as counts of certain lattice paths and tableaux, and as entries of representing matrices for certain linear transformations of polynomial spaces. Lucas's theorem is applied to determine precisely those truncations for which the number of odd entries on each row is a power of two.