Methods of Enumeration

STAT 400
September 1, 2016
Definition: Suppose an experiment, Ei has ni possible outcomes. The composite experiment Ei Ej
has ni nj possible outcomes.
Example 1 Suppose you have 5 shirts (E1 ), 7 pairs of pants (E2 ), and 3 pairs of shoes (E3 ). How
many possible outfits, or combinations of clothes, are there?
The multiplication principle implies there are (5)(7)(3) = 105 possible outfits.
Example 2 Ten coins are tossed simultaneously. In how many of the outcomes will the third coin
turn up a head?
We fix the third coin to heads and there are 29 arrangments for the remaining coins.
Example 3 The call letters of radio and television stations in the U.S begin with either K or W.
Those west of the Mississippi River start with K and those east of it with W. Most stations that
were licensed after 1927 have 4 call letters, such as KUZZ in Bakersfield, California, and WXYZ in
Detroit, Michigan. How many sets of call letters having 4 letters are possible?
2 (263 ) = 35, 152.
Definition The number of possibilities to sample with or without replacement in order or unordered
r elements from a set of n distinct elements are summarized in the following table:
Sampling

in order

without order

without replacement

n!
(nr)!

 

with replacement

nr
1

n
r

n+r1
r

STAT 400

Methods of Enumeration

Consider sampling n balls from an urn.

1. There are nr ways to sample r balls with replacement.
2. Permutations: r = n balls. We select elements without replacement (i.e., once we select the
element we do not put it back). The number of possibilities for the first choice is n, the
second n 1, etc. There are n! permutations.
3. Permutations: r < n balls. Let n Pr be the total number of arrangements

n Pr

n!
(n r)!

4. Combinations, or distinguishable permutations.

There are r! ways of ordering the selected objects.
Let n Cr be the number of unordered combinations, or distinguishable permutations,
n Cr

(r!) = n Pr
!

n Pr

n
n!
=
=
n Cr =
r!
r
r! (n r)!
5. Multisets or stars and bars. Consider sampling n balls of r different types.
The number of ways to choose r different objects (or stars) from n objects (or bars) is,
!!

n
r

n+r1
n+r1
=
=
r
n1
!

The double parenthesis denotes a multiset.

6. Multinomial coefficient. If there are n balls that consist of r different types, then,
n=

Pr

i=1

ni is the total number of balls. The number of distinguishable permutations is,

!

n
n!
=
n1 , n2 , , nr
n1 !n2 ! nr !

Stepanov, Culpepper

STAT 400

Methods of Enumeration

Example 4 Consider sampling the letters a, b, c, d without replacement.

a. Who many arrangements?
4!.
b. Randomly select a as the last letter?
Fix a as the last number and there are 3! ways to arrange the other three letters when
sampling without replacement.
c. How many arrangement where we choose a immediately after d?
Consider da as one draw, so there are now only three outcomes. There are therefore 3!
arrangements.
d. How many arrangements where we choose d before a?
If d is in the first position there are 3! ways of rearranging the other three letters.
If d is in the second position there are 2 ways to pick the first letter and 2 ways to
shuffle a and the other letter for a total of 4.
If d is in the third position there are 2 ways of picking b and c.
There are 12 ways where d is picked before a.
e. Suppose we want to place a, b, c, or d in two bins of two. How many arrangements are
there if we consider the bins are distinguishable versus indistinguishable?
If the bins are distinguishable there are
there are

 

4 1
2 2

 
4
2

= 6 ways. If the bins are indistinguishable

= 3 ways.

Stepanov, Culpepper

STAT 400

Methods of Enumeration

Example 5 Eight horses are entered in a race in which bets are placed on which horse will win,
place, and show (that is, finish first, second and third). Suppose that the race is run and there are
no ties.
a. In how many orders can all eight horses finish the race?
There are 8 ways for 1st place, 7 for 2nd place, 6 for 3rd place, etc., which is 8! =
40,320.
b. In how many ways can the win, place, and show be taken?
There are 8 ways for 1st, 7 for 2nd and 6 for 3rd, which can also be written as,

8 P3

8!
= 336
5!

Example 6 The Baskin-Robbins Ice Cream Stores have 31 flavors of ice cream.
a. How many different 3-scoop ice cream cones are possible if you are allowed to repeat flavors
and want the scoops put on the cone in a particular order?
This problem involves sampling 31 flavors with replacement, so there are 313 = 29, 791.
b. How many different 3-scoop ice cream cones are possible if each scoop is a different flavor
and you want the scoops put on the cone in a particular order?
We are now interested in the number of permutations where the sampling of flavors is
done without replacement,

31 P3

31!
= 26, 970.
28!

c. How many different 3-scoop cones are possible if each scoop is a different flavor and you dont
care about their order on the cone?
4

Stepanov, Culpepper

STAT 400

Methods of Enumeration

We are now interested in the number of distinguishable arrangements or combinations,

31
31!
= 4, 495.
=
31 C3 =
3!28!
3
!

Example 7 Consider the word CORPORATION.

a. How many distinguishable arrangements are there for the word CORPORATION be arranged?
In this case, we have 11 different objects, but only 8 different letters. Therefore, we can
use the multinomial coefficient formula and the number of distinguishable arrangements
is,

11!
1!1!1!1!1!1!3!2!

b. In how many different ways can the letters of the word CORPORATION be arranged so
that the vowels always come together?
We need to consider the vowels as 1 block, say V, so we need to count the number of
permutations of CRPRTNV. Note that V includes OOAIO, so there are 5 P3 ; i.e., 5
ways positions to place the numbers and then the Os can be arranged in 3! ways. For
CORPORATION there are 7! arrangements, but we need to divide by 2 for the 2 Rs.
The total number of arrangements is,
7!
2!

5!
3!

= 50, 400

c. What is the probability that the vowels appear together when randomly shuffling the letters?
Compute the ratio of the two previous problems:
P (Vowels appear together) =

7!
2!

 

5!
3!
11!
1!1!1!1!1!1!3!2!

1
66

Stepanov, Culpepper

STAT 400

Methods of Enumeration

Example 8 Suppose there are C people, each of whose birthdays (month and day only) are equally
likely to fall on any of the 365 days of a normal (i.e., non-leap) year. Suppose C 2.
a. What is the probability that at least one of the C-1 people share your birthday?
There are 364C1 ways for the other C 1 people to have different birthdays from you
out of a possible 365C1 ways. The probability that someone else shares your birthday
is,

364
1
365


C1

In a classroom of 180 there is approximately a 0.388 chance that someone has your
birthday.
b. What is the probability that at least two of the C<365 people share the same exact birthday?
Note that there are 365C arrangements of birthdays. We can use the compliment
approach to solve this problem. We can count the number of non-matching birthdays
as,

365!
(365 C)!

Accordingly, the probability that at least two people have the same birthday is,
1

365C

365!
(365 C)!

In a classroom of 180 there is approximately a 1 chance that someone has your birthday.

Stepanov, Culpepper

STAT 400

Methods of Enumeration

Example 9 In 5-card poker (with a standard 52 card deck), what is the probability of being dealt
the following hands:
a. A flush (i.e., a hand with 5 different values of the same suit) when excluding the number of
straight flushes?
Poker hands are distinguished by two features: the value and suit of the card. For
all poker probabilities we need to use the multiplication principle to count the ways of
selecting hands with different values and suits.
There are

 
13
5

ways to select 5 cards of the 13 values and

 
4
1

ways to choose the number

of suits.
We need to subtract out the number of straight flushes. There are 10 possible straight
sequences, so there are

  
10
1

4
1

possible straight flushes.

The probability of a flush is,

 

P (f lush) =

13
5

   

10
1
52
5

4
1

 

b. A full house (i.e., a hand with three cards of the same value and two cards of the same value).
There are
  
12
1

4
2

  
13
1

4
3

ways of the choosing the value and suit of the three of a kind and

ways of choosing the pair.

    

P (f ull house) =

13
1

4
3

12
1

4
2

 
52
5

Stepanov, Culpepper

STAT 400

Methods of Enumeration

Example 10 The U.S. House of Representatives has 435 seats. (In this context, a seat is not a
chair, but a right to belong to the legislative body. Thus, all seats are indistinguishable.)
a. In how many ways can the seats be distributed among three political parties?
You should notice that we are now choosing members from 1 of 3 parties with replacement.
We cannot use the combinations formula that assumes sampling without replacement.
Each distribution can be represented by 435 stars for the seats (i.e., r = 435), and two
bars to separate the stars into three groups. So the answer is

3+4351
435

= 437 218 =

95, 266.
b. In how many ways can the seats be distributed among three political parties so that no party
has a majority? (This implies that a coalition of any two parties does not form a majority.)
No party can have 218 seats or more. Weve counted the total number of ways of
distributing seats among three parties in part (a), and thus well subtract the number
of ways one party could have a majority. We can count the number of ways a party can
be in the majority by giving it 218, 219, 220,. . . seats and distributing the remaining
217, 216, 215,. . . seats among two parties. Since there are three parties, the answer is,

217
X
3 + 435 1
2+s1
3
435
s
s=0

3 + 435 1
3 + 217 1
=
3
435
217
!

= 437 218 3 219 109 = 23, 653

where the second equality was established because



n+2
n

Pn

s=0

s+1
s

Pn+1
i=1

i=

(n+1)(n+2)
2

. Another more straigtforward way to think about this is that we subtract out

the number of ways to allocate the remaining 217 seats among the three parties times
the number of ways we can pick the majority party.
8

Stepanov, Culpepper