We explain how the moments of the (weight function of the) Askey Wilson polynomials are related to the enumeration of the staircase tableaux introduced by the first and fourth authors [11, 12]. This gives us a direct combinatorial formula for these moments, which is related to, but more elegant than the formula given in [11]. Then we use techniques developed by Ismail and the third author to give explicit formulae for these moments and for the enumeration of staircase tableaux. Finally we study the enumeration of staircase tableaux at various specializations of the parameterizations; for example, we obtain the Catalan numbers, Fibonacci numbers, Eulerian numbers, the number of permutations, and the number of matchings.

Dumont and Foata introduced in 1976 a three-variable symmetric refinement of Genocchi numbers, which satisfies a simple recurrence relation. A six-variable generalization with many similar properties was later considered by Dumont. They generalize a lot of known integer sequences, and their ordinary generating function can be expanded as a Jacobi continued fraction. We give here a new combinatorial interpretation of the six-variable polynomials in terms of the alternative tableaux introduced by Viennot. A powerful tool to enumerate alternative tableaux is the so-called “matrix Ansatz”, and using this we show that our combinatorial interpretation naturally leads to a new proof of the continued fraction expansion.