On the partitions into distinct parts and odd parts

Abstract

In this paper, we show that the difference between the number of parts in the odd partitions of $n$ and the number of parts in the distinct partitions of $n$ satisfies Euler's recurrence relation for the partition function $p(n)$ when $n$ is odd. A decomposition of this difference in terms of the total number of parts in all the partitions of $n$ is also derived. In this context, we conjecture that for $k>0$, the series $$ (q^2;q^2)_\infty \sum_{n=k}^\infty \frac{q^{{k\choose 2}+(k+1)n}}{(q;q)_n} \begin{bmatrix} n-1\\k-1 \end{bmatrix} $$ has non-negative coefficients.