Generating function
In mathematics, a generating function is a representation of an infinite sequence of numbers as the coefficients of a formal power series. Unlike an ordinary series, the formal power series is not required to converge: in fact, the generating function is not actually regarded as a function, and the "variable" remains an indeterminate. Generating functions were first introduced by Abraham de Moivre in 1730, in order to solve the general linear recurrence problem.[1] One can generalize to formal power series in more than one indeterminate, to encode information about infinite multi-dimensional arrays of numbers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generating_function