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I have made a couple of attempts on these practice problems (suggested not homework) for my intro probability class. They are all combinatorics problems.

The following problems were more confusing

  • How many functions f from {1,...,25} to {1,...,25} have the following property

(a) f is constant;

(b) the maximum value of f is 25

(c) f(1)<f(2)<f(3)

Here is my attempt

(a) Because f is constant, I said there are only 25 possible functions due to the fact that only one value of A (the first set) can be mapped on to all of B.

(b) I simply said $25^{25}$.

(c) $25 \times 24 \times 23 \times 25^{22}$ because the first three functions must be greater than the thee where the remaining positions can be of any value.

  • There are n men and m women. Find the number of committees k people if

(a) two of the men cannot serve together

(b) one man and one woman cannot serve together

I found several examples similar to this problem. Here are my solutions

(a) $\binom{n}{k}\binom{m}{k} - \binom{n-2}{k}$

My reasoning is that you are taking the complement of the possible cases (you cannot choose two additional men).

(b) $\binom{n}{k}\binom{m}{k} - \binom{m-1}{k}\binom{n-1}{k}$

  • 35 identical blackboards are to be divided among 4 different schools.

(a) How many divisions are possible?

(b) How many divisions are possible if each school must receive two boards?

Following that one of the facts of multi-sets is $\binom{n + r - 1}{r - - 1}$, where $r - 1$ are the number of dividers and that n is the sample size.

(a) $\binom{35 + 4 - 1}{4 -1} = \binom{38}{3}$

(b)$\binom{35 - 2}{4 -2} = \binom{32}{2}$

And lastly,

  • Let n be a positive integer. Find the number of vectors ($x_1,...,x_n$) such that each $x_i$ is a positive integer and $x_1+ ...+ x_n \leq n + 2.$

Here is my solution:

$\binom{n + 2 + r - 1}{r - 1} = \binom{n + r + 1}{r - 1}$

Any comments will be appreciated! Thank you. It is kind of urgent.

  • Rule of sum, Rule of product, complements, combinations, permutations, stars and bars, bijection, and double-counting (or k-counting) will get you most of the way. Know when and how to use them. $\quad$ Note that your 1b is wrong, since the constant function $f(x) = 1$ does not have a maximum of 25. – Calvin Lin Jan 26 '25 at 18:07
  • True, I am sadly dependent on examples. Do you have any suggestions for similar questions to these? My textbook feels kind of inadequate (Probability by Ross) – noornoornoor Jan 27 '25 at 04:19

1 Answers1

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(1a) is correct.

A constant function has a single value in its range, and there are $25$ possible values to choose from.

(1b) is wrong.

As Calvin pointed out in the comments, you did not impose the required condition in your counting. Note that if $25$ is in the range of $f$, then $25$ is automatically the maximum value of $f$. Hence, to count functions of this form, it suffices to count functions where $25$ appears at least once among the images of $f$. Equivalently, one can exclude the functions that don't have $25$ in their range. So the answer is $25^{25}-24^{25}$.

(1c) is wrong.

Though you did recognize that $f(1) \neq f(2) \neq f(3)$ (they must take on distinct values), your counting does not necessarily force $f(1) < f(2) < f(3)$. For example, suppose you choose $f(1) = 25$. Then you do not have $24$ options for $f(2)$. In fact, you have no options that satisfy $f(2) > f(1)$. So you have overcounted.

To remedy this, note that you don't have to assign $f(1), f(2)$ and $f(3)$ directly (why does your counting do this?). Instead, if you simply choose $3$ numbers for $f(1), f(2)$ and $f(3)$ to take on, there is a unique order that makes $f(1) < f(2) < f(3)$. So the problem is equivalent to choosing $3$ numbers for $f(1), f(2)$ and $f(3)$, then mapping the remaining $22$ inputs to any of the $25$ possible values. Hence, the answer is ${25 \choose 3}25^{22}$.

(2a) is wrong.

The idea of using complements is correct, but was executed incorrectly. Let $M_1, M_2$ be our distinguished men. The total committees of size $k$ is ${n+m \choose k}$. What you have considered your total, ${n \choose k}{m \choose k}$, on the other hand, is counting something else - say, committees of size $2k$ with $k$ men and $k$ women. As for counting the committees that violate the condition (where $M_1, M_2$ are in them), this is equivalent to fixing $M_1, M_2$ in the committee, then choosing the remaining $k-2$ other people from the other $n+m-2$ individuals. So ${n+m-2 \choose k-2}$ committees violate the condition. Instead, you counted ${n-2 \choose k}$, which counts, say, the committees of size $k$ comprised only of men excluding $M_1$ and $M_2$. The correct count gives us an answer of ${n+m \choose k } - {n+m-2 \choose k-2}$.

(2b) is wrong.

The answer is the same as (2a), since the argument directly transfers. It does not matter that they are of different gender. You are still excluding a specific pair of individuals.

(3a) is correct.

This is a case of "stars and bars".

(3b) is wrong.

One approach would be to give $2$ boards to each school up front, then distribute the rest freely. If we give $2$ boards to each school up front, that leaves us with $35-2(4) = 27$ boards to distribute freely, reducing to the case of part (a) to get an answer of ${ 27+4-1 \choose 4-1} = {30 \choose 3}$.

(4) is unclear. What is $r$?

To solve this, one can try to reduce it to the case of counting when a vector of nonnegative integers sums to a specific number, for which the technique is just to use stars and bars. To do this, we modify our problem a bit. Since $x_i > 0$, we have $x_i -1 \geq 0$.

Let $y_i = x_i - 1$. If $x_1 + \cdots + x_n \leq n+2$, then \begin{align} y_1 + \cdots + y_n &= (x_1 - 1) + \cdots + (x_n - 1) \\&= x_1 + \cdots + x_n - n \\&\leq (n+2)-n = 2. \end{align}

This looks very similar to the problem we want to reduce to. Indeed, the only difference is that we have a $\leq$ instead of an equals (note that the $y_i$ are nonnegative). To fix this, observe that if $$y_1 + \cdots + y_n \leq 2,$$ then there is some $z \geq 0$ such that $$y_1 + \cdots + y_n + z = 2.$$ So a solution $(x_1, \dots, x_n)$ to the original problem corresponds directly to a solution $(y_1,\dots,y_n,z)$ of nonnegative integers such that $$y_1 + \cdots + y_n + z = 2,$$ and vice versa (let $x_i = y_i+1$). This completes our reframing of the problem into the one linked above. By stars and bars, the number of solutions $(y_1, \dots, y_n, z)$ of this form is precisely ${2+(n+1)-1 \choose (n+1)-1} = {n+2 \choose n} = {n+2 \choose 2}$.

alvnya
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