Pigeon Hole Principle

1. Among any 8 people there are at least 2 who have their birthdays on the same day of the week.
2. Among 13 people there are 2 who have their birthdays in the same month.
3. Among any collection of 367 persons there are at least 2 who have the same date of birth.
All the three examples illustrate the Pigeon Hole Principle which states that:
Pigeon Hole Principle. If n + 1 objects are placed in n boxes then at least one box contains at
least two objects.
This principle is also called Dirichlets Box Principle or Shubfach Principle.
The proof is immediate by contradiction. Since if each box contains at most one object then the total
number of objects is n.
4. Given any m + 1 integers there exists at least two whose dierence is divisible by m.
5. If a1 , a2 , ..., am are any m integers then 1 k < l m such that ak+1 + ak+2 + ... + a1 is divisible by
m. To see this consider the m + 1 numbers 0, a1 , a1 + a2 , ..., a1 + ... + am and apply Example 4.
6. If the population of a city is 25000, and each resident has 3 initials, then there must be at least 2 people
with the same initials. Total number of possible initials = 263 < 25000.
7. Given any n + 1 integers between 1 to 2n, show that there exists 2 integers so that one of them divides the
other.
8. If a bookseller sells 650 books in a year, selling at least one book per day, show that on certain consecutive
days in the year he sells exactly 79 books (assuming that the year in question has 365 days).
Suppose that he sells a1 books on the rst day, . . ., ar books in rst r days. Then we have:
1 a1 < a2 < ... < a365 = 650
79 + a1 < 79 + a2 < ... < 79 + a365 = 729.
Applying Pigeon Hole Principle to the collection {a1 , a2 , ... a365 , 79 + a1 , 79 + a2 , ... 79 + a365 }, there exists
k, l such that al = 79 + ak or al ak = 79 so that between (k + 1)th day through the lth day he sells exactly
79 books.

Remark. Dirichlets Box Principle is only an existence result; it shows the existence of a box containing at
least 2 objects, but can give no clue as to which box has this property.

10. If p is a prime, then there exists integers a, b such that p divides a2 + b2 + 1.

This is used to prove that every natural number n is a sum of squares of four integers, i.e.,
n = x21 + x22 + x23 + x24 , xi Z.
We can generalize the Pigeon Hole Principle in many ways:
1. Out of any 61 persons at least 6 persons are born in the same month.

2. At least 5 out of any 29 persons are born on the same day of the week.

If we want to nd a box with at least r objects in it, then the corresponding result is:
II. If r 2 is an integer, then if n(r 1) + 1 objects are placed in n boxes, then there exists a
box with at least r objects.

We could in fact generalize this as follows:

Let A be a real number. Dene
|A| = Ceiling of A = Smallest integer A
|A| = Floor of A = Largest integer A.
For example if A = 5.2, |A| = 6, |A| = 5.
A = 5 implies |A| = |A| = 5.

III. If M objects are placed in n boxes with average A = M/n, then there exists a box with
at least |A| objects and a box with at most |A| objects.

Another generalization is as follows:

IV. If q1 1, ..., qn 1 are integers and if q1 + ... + qn n + 1 objects are placed in n boxes
then there exists an i, 1 i n such that the ith box has at least qi objects.

11. Out of any 85 people there are at least 2 who are born in the same month and the same day of the week.
12. Given 20 French, 30 Spanish, 25 German, 20 Italian, 50 Russian and 17 English books, how many books
must be chosen to guarantee that at least
(a) 10 books of one language are chosen
(b) 6 French, 11 Spanish, 7 German, 4 Italian, 20 Russian or 8 English books are chosen?
13. Suppose that in a group of 6 persons, each pair are either friends or enemies. Show that there are 3
persons who are either mutual friends or mutual enemies.
An equivalent formulation of the problem is as follows:
14. Given any 6 points, no three of which are collinear, each of the 15 line segments obtained by joining any
two are coloured red or blue. Show that there exists a triangle which is coloured only red or only blue.
Let A0 be any of one vertices. Consider the 5 edges A0 A1 , A0 A2 , A0 A3 , A0 A4 , A0 A5 . At least three out of
these must be of the same colour (say red). Let these be renamed as A0 A, A0 B, A0 C. If any of AB, BC or
CA is red coloured, then A0 AB is a red triangle, otherwise all the three sides AB, BC, CA are blue coloured
and so ABC is a blue triangle. The result is false if we use ve points as the following examples shows:

15. (Erdos-Szekeres) In any sequence a1 , a2 , ..., an2 +1 of real numbers, there exists n + 1 of these which are
either in the ascending order or in the descending order.
This could be formulated in the following interesting way:
Suppose n2 + 1 people are lined up in a straight line. Then it is possible to choose n + 1 among these and
asked to take a step forward, so that their heights are either increasing or decreasing.
16. How many cards must be drawn from a deck of 52 cards to be sure that you have seven cards of one suit?
17. How many times must we throw two dice in order to be sure that we obtain the same total score at least
7 times?
18. Suppose 70 students are taking 11 dierent subjects, enrolement to each being restricted to 15. Show that
there are three subjects with enrolement at least 7, 6 and 5 respectively.
19. Suppose 63 seats in a class room are arranged with 7 rows of 9 seats each. Suppose 40 students are seated
randomly. Show that each row has at least 6 students and some column has at most 4 students.
20. Given any 5 points in the interior of a square of side 1, show that there exists two points within a distance

of at most 1/ 2.
21. Prove that of any 5 (10) given points in an equilateral triangle of side 1, there are two points within a
distance of at most 1/2 (1/3).
22. Given any 7 integers, there are at least 2 whose sum or dierence is divisible by 10.
23. If there are 104 dierent pairs of people who know each other at a party of 30 people, show that some
person has at most 6 acquaintances.
24. Prove that in a group of n people (n 1) there are two who have the same number of acquaintances in
the group.