MacMahon's partition analysis. II: Fundamental theorems (Q5930082)

This is the second in a series of papers on MacMahon's method of partition analysis outlined in Section VIII of Volume 2 of his famous book ``Combinatory analysis.'' The first paper in this series appeared in Mathematical essays in honour of Gian-Carlo Rota (B. Sagan and R. Stanley (eds.)), Birkhäuser, Prog. Math. 161, 1-22 (1998; Zbl 0924.11087). The present paper discusses a number of results which MacMahon could have obtained by his method; for example, the number of partitions of \(n\) with nonnegative first and second differences between parts is equal to the number of partitions of \(n\) into triangular numbers. Further, the problem of enumerating incongruent triangles with integer sides and perimeter \(n\) [\textit{J. H. Jordan}, \textit{R. Walsh} and \textit{R. J. Wisner}, Am. Math. Mon. 86, 686-689 (1979; Zbl 0421.51004)] is discussed from the viewpoint of MacMahon's method, and new insights are in this way achieved.