Signs behaviour of sums of weighted numbers of compositions

Abstract

Let $A$ be a subset of positive integers. For a given positive integer $n$ and $0\leq i\leq n$ let $c_{A}(i,n)$ denotes the number of $A$-compositions of $n$ with exactly $i$ parts. In this note we investigate the sign behaviour of the sequence $(S_{A,k}(n))_{n\in\N}$, where $S_{A,k}(n)=\sum_{i=0}^{n}(-1)^{k}i^{k}c_{A}(i,n)$. We prove that for a broad class of subsets $A$, the number $(-1)^{n}S_{A,k}(n)$ is non-negative for all sufficiently large $n$. Moreover, we show that there is $A\subset \N_{+}$ such that the sign behaviour of $S_{A,k}(n)$ is not periodic.