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There is a beautiful paper on the arXiv by Andrew Suk containing an asymptotic result about the Erdös-Szekeres convex polygon problem. I am struggling with one of the estimates he makes on page 4. He claims that for $n$ large enough, we have $$ 2^{n^{4/5} + 4n^{3/5} - 50n^{3/10}} \geq \binom{n + \lceil2n^{3/4} \rceil - 4}{n-2} + 1 $$ Combinatorics is far from being my area of expertise, so I tried proving this the only way I know, which is Stirling's approximation. That did not get me very far. I only obtain that the right hand side grows like $2^n$, which is rather trivial.

How do you prove that the above inequality holds for large enough $n$?

PS: I also tried to contact him of course.

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  • $\begingroup$ the claim seems to be that this inequality holds for any $n$. $\endgroup$ Commented Jun 27, 2016 at 17:56
  • $\begingroup$ @CarloBeenakker : He writes "Since $n$ is sufficiently large" in the paragraph before the statement. $\endgroup$ Commented Jun 27, 2016 at 18:00

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We have $$\binom{x}k=\frac{x(x-1)\dots (x-k+1)}{k!}\leqslant \frac{x^k}{k!}\leqslant x^k$$ for positive integers $x, k$. Applying this to $k=[2n^{3/4}]-2$, $x=n+k-2\leqslant 2n$ (for large $n$) we get $$\binom{n+k-2}{n-2}=\binom{n+k-2}{k}\leqslant (2n)^k=e^{k\log(2n)},$$ the rest follows from $4/5>3/4$.

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  • $\begingroup$ For small n it does. Eventually $n^{1/20} \gt \log(n)$ though. Gerhard "Look At The Big Picture" Paseman, 2016.06.27. $\endgroup$ Commented Jun 27, 2016 at 18:22
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    $\begingroup$ <comments above refer to a confused deleted comment of mine> $\endgroup$ Commented Jun 27, 2016 at 21:35

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