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We have $n+2$ balls and $n$ bins, in how many ways we can divide the balls between the bins such that there's no empty bin? (Bins are different and numbered)

My attempt: for the first bin we have $n+2$ options, for the second bin $n+1$ options, etc, for the last bin we have 3 options, when every bin has one ball we have two balls left, there are $n$ options for each ball so the final answer is: $\frac {(n+2)!}{2}\cdot n^2$

EDIT: The balls are different. (sorry I forgot to add that)

GinKin
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    So you're counting all surjective functions from $n+2$ to $n$. See http://math.stackexchange.com/a/264814/4280 (Stirling numbers of the second kind) – Henno Brandsma Feb 26 '15 at 18:03

2 Answers2

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Since each bin must have at least 1 ball, you only free to choose how to place the remaining two balls. They can either both go in the same bin ($n$ ways to do this) or in different bins ($\binom{n}{2}$ ways to do this). Thus $$ n+\binom{n}{2}=\binom{n+1}{2}. $$

UPDATE: the balls being distinct changes things. There are $\binom{n+2}{n}$ ways to select how to fill the bins with 1 ball each. Then there are $n!$ ways to order each selection for a total of $$ n!\binom{n+2}{n} $$ ways to fill the bins with 1 ball each. The last two balls can either both go in the same bin ($n$ ways to do this) or in different bins ($2\binom{n}{2}$ ways to do this). The factor of two is from the fact that once I have selected the individual bins to put the remaining balls in, there are 2 distinct ways to fill them. Thus $$ n!\binom{n+2}{n}\left(n+2\binom{n}{2}\right). $$

Laars Helenius
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  • It took me a while to see that $n!\binom{n+2}{n}=\frac {(n+2)!}{2}$ so at least I got that right.. Thanks for the detailed answer. – GinKin Feb 26 '15 at 18:24
  • I would get too hung up on simplifying the expression. There are lots of ways to proceed. – Laars Helenius Feb 26 '15 at 18:25
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The so called Stirling number so the second kind S(n,k) is the number of ways to distribute $n$ different objects over $k$ undistinguished subsets. In this case we have $n+2$ objects and $n$ distinguished bins, so we get $n!S(n+2,n)$ as the number.

Now use the explicit formula from the Wikipedia page.

Henno Brandsma
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