Four Related Combinatorial Problems

Abstract

This pedagogical article solves an interesting problem in quantum measure theory. Although a quantum measure $\mu$ is a generalization of an ordinary probability measure, $\mu$ need not satisfy the usual additivity condition. Instead, $\mu$ satisfies a grade-2 additivity condition. Besides the quantum measure problem, we present three additional combinatorial problems. These are (1)\enspace A sum of binomial coefficients problem;\enspace (2)\enspace A recurrence relation problem; and\enspace (3)\enspace An interated vector problem. We show that these three problems are equivalent in that they have a common solution. We then show that this solves the original quantum measure problem.