Taylor expansions for Catalan and Motzkin numbers

Abstract

In this paper we introduce two new expansions for the generating functions of Catalan numbers and Motzkin numbers. The novelty of the expansions comes from writing the Taylor remainder as a functional of the generating function. We give combinatorial interpretations of the coefficients of these two expansions and derive several new results. These findings can be used to prove some old formulae associated with Catalan and Motzkin numbers. In particular, our expansion for Catalan number provides a simple proof of the classic Chung–Feller theorem; similar result for the Motzkin paths with flaws is also given.