Discussion Problems and Solutions 8

Section 5.3

Exercise 1: A group contains n men and n women. How many ways are there to arrange these people in a row if the men and women alternate. Solution: We assume that the row has a distinguished head. Consider the order in which the men appear relative to each other. There are n men, and all of the P (n, n) = n! arrangements is allowed. Similarly, there are n! arrangements in which the women can appear. Now the men and women must alternate, and there are the same number of men and women; therefore there are exactly two possibilities: either the row starts with a man and ends with a woman (M W M W . . . M W ) or else it starts with a woman and ends with a man (W M W M . . . W M ). We have three tasks to perform, then: arrange the men among themselves, arrange the women among themselves, and decide which sex starts the row. By the product rule there are n! n! 2 = 2(n!)2 ways in which this can be done. Exercise 2: Suppose that a department contains 10 men and 15 women. How many ways are there to form a committee with six members if it must have the same number of men and women? Solution: We are told that we must select three of the 10 men and three of the 15 women. This can be done is C(10, 3)C(15, 3) = 54600 ways.

Section 5.4
2n 2n + n+1 n 2n + 2 /2 n+1

Exercise 3: Let n be a positive integer. Show that =

Solution: We use Pascals Identity twice: 2n 2n + n+1 n = 1 2 = 2n + 1 n+1 = 1 2 2n + 1 2n + 1 + n+1 n+1 = 1 2n + 2 2 n+1

2n + 1 2n + 1 + n+1 n
r

Exercise 4: Prove that n+k k = n+r+1 r

k=0

whenever n and r are nonnegative integers. Solution: We need to prove this by induction on r. Pascals Identity will enter at the crucial step. We let P (r) be the statement to be proved. The basis step is clear, since the equation reduces to n = n+1 , which is the true proposition 1 = 1. 0 0 Assuming the inductive hypothesis, we derive P (r + 1) in the usual way:
r+1

k=0

n+k k

=
k=0

n+k n+r+1 + k r+1 = n + (r + 1) + 1 r+1

n+r+1 n+r+1 + r r+1

Section 5.5

Exercise 5: How many ways are there to distribute six indistinguishable balls into nine distinguishable bins? Solution: If we think of the balls as doing the choosing, then this is asking for the number of ways to choose six bins from the nine given bins, with repetition allowed. By Theorem 2 with n = 9 and r = 6, this choice can be made in C(9 + 6 1, 6) = C(14, 6) = 3003 ways. Exercise 6: How many positive integers less than 1,000,000 have the sum of their digits equal to 19? Solution: Let d1 , d2 , . . . , d6 be the digits of a natural number less than 1,000,000; they can each be anything from 0 to 9. If we want the sum of the digits to equal 19, then we are asking for the number of solutions to the equation d1 + d2 + + d6 = 2

19 with 0 di 9 for each i. Ignoring the upper bound restriction, there are, by Theorem 2 C(6 + 19 1, 19) = C(24, 19) = C(24, 5) = 42504 of them. We must subtract the number of solutions in which the restriction is violated. If the digits are to add up to 19 and one or more of them is to exceed 9, then exactly one of them will have to exceed 9, since 10 + 10 > 19. There are 6 ways to choose the digit that will exceed 9. Once we have made that choice, then we count the number of solutions to the equation by counting the number of solutions to d1 + d2 + + d6 = 19 10 = 9, by Theorem 2 there are C(6 + 9 1, 9) = C(14, 9) = C(14, 5) = 2002 of them. Thus there are 6 2002 = 12012 solutions that violate the restriction. Subtracting this from the 42504 solutions altogether, we nd that 42504 12012 = 30492 is the answer to the problem.