Proof of Conjecture 19 of Ballantine, Beck, Merca, and Sagan on Elementary Symmetric Partitions
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Ballantine, Beck, Merca, and Sagan conjectured four identities, collectively Conjecture 19, relating the image of the map pre_k on integer partitions to four OEIS sequences. We prove parts (i) and (iii) unconditionally, prove part (iv) unconditionally using the injectivity of pre_2 on partitions of n (Conjecture 1 of the same paper, proved by Li in arXiv:2508.00971), and show that this injectivity is in fact equivalent to part (iv). For part (ii) we prove the partition-theoretic half unconditionally and reduce the remaining content to a 2006 conjecture of Dean Hickerson on the OEIS concerning Huffman coding. We also correct a sign error in the published statement of part (iii): the correct identity is chi(ImP_3(n)) = A213213(n) - 1, not 1 + A213213(n) as stated.
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