Aspects of Stirling numbers of the second kind (Q1921944)

The author gives a good view on the Stirling numbers of the second kind: their combinatorial definition, their recurrence formulas, and their occurrence in many seemingly unrelated fields of mathematics, like calculus of finite differences, binomial distributions, etc. There is a bibliography of 4 items. Reviewer's remark: The author's proposition 2 is a (very simple) consequency (by summing up) of a formula given by \textit{J. Riordan} [Combinatorial identities (1968; Zbl 0194.00502), p. 90]; see also the reviewer [J. Reine Angew. Math. 266, 88-99 (1974; Zbl 0288.05007)]. This is valid for all complex \(a_i\)'s---not only positive reals. Now the author's section on power sums artificially must take all \(x\) positive real.