derivation of the generating series for the Stirling numbers of the second kind
The derivation of the generating series is much simpler if one makes use of the composition![]()
lemma for exponential generating series. We are looking for the generating series for sets of nonempty sets, so in the notation of Jackson and Goulden, we have the set decomposition:
where is the set of all canonical unordered sets, is the set which we are interested in counting, and is star-composition of sets of labelled combinatorial objects.
The set has one object in it of each weight, and so has exponential generating series:
The set then has generating series:
So, by the star composition lemma and the above decomposition,
By tensoring the weight function with a weight function counting the number of parts each set partition![]()
contains, we get
using a derivation similar to the one above.