Various topics that we have studied

January 21, 2015

Keep this file for future reference. I will update it periodicaly.

Counting

Before we discuss the fine art of counting, we need to discuss both some terminology and
some more basic concepts. For the purpose of these notes the following statements are true.
The words distinct and dierent are the synonyms.
The words outcomes and possibilities are synonyms.
The words sequence and strings are synonyms. A sequence is defined as an ordered list of
elements, which need not to be distinct. For example, R,U,S,T,E,A,L,P,H,O,L,O,W,I,N,G,M,E
is a sequence of letters.
A set is commonly defined as a collection of distinct elements (for example A = {C, U, L}
and B = {Y, U, P } are sets), while objects that contain multiple copies are called multisets.
The union of two sets (AU B) is the set of elements in either or both sets. For example
AU B = {C, U, L}U {Y, U, P } = {C, U, L, Y, P }. So, the union of two sets is the smallest
set which contains both sets as subsets.
The intersection of two sets is the set of elements the two have in common. In our
example (AintB) = {C, U, L}int{Y, U, P } = {U }. If there is no element that is common
to both sets, we say that the sets are disjoint and their intersection is the emptyset.
|A| denotes the number of elements in a set (not the absolute value in this case since
sometimes we want to make things a little confusing).
A partition of a set is a collection of disjoint subsets whose union equals the entire set.
Got it?! You imagine how easy math is since we call these concepts basics. But, hey, do
not despair ... there is light at the end of the tunnel. Who knows, maybe using these abstract
concepts can help us become better people in life (whatever better means).

1.1

Basics of Counting

Most people think counting is easy. And you cant blame them since this is sometimes true.
Consider counting the number of elements in a sequence of integers say from 0 to 10. It easy
to verify that this sequence has 11 elements. More generally, if we have a sequence of integers
say from a to b (with the property than a < b) we can find that, including a and b, there are
b a + 1 elements (to see this just consider the previous example: b = 10 and a = 0 so the
number of elements is 10 0 + 1 = 11).
Although we didmt explicitly talked about them, there are two basic principles in counting
that you should be aware of (the formal definitions are more complicated but the basic ideas
behind them are easier to understand).
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1. Sum rule: suppose a certain task (or operation) can be done by two dierent procedures.
One procedure has n possible outcomes (to be more formal you can say a set of outcomes)
while the other has m outcomes (or a set of m outcomes). Moreover assume that the
outcomes of the two tasks are totally dierent - we say that the set of outcomes n and
the set of outcomes m are disjoint (we can also use an earlier basic concept: disjoint sets
are sets whose ). Then, the number of possible outcomes is n+m.
This rule is a lot simpler than the fancy statement we used to describe it. Lets say
mommy has decided to go shopping today :-( and she wants to take her favorite
son with her. However, she decided to shop only at one store :-), either in the north
part or the south part of town. If she decides to go to the north part she can stop
either at a clothing store, a jewelry store of a furniture store. If she goes south
of town she can choose between a shoe store or arts and crafts store. How many
possible shops can mommy end shopping at today? The answer is straight forward
3+2=5. Therefore there are 5 possible outcomes.
2. Product rule: When there are m ways to do one thing, and n ways to do another, then
there are mn ways of doing both. This can be extended: if the are n1 ways to do one
thing, n2 to do another and n3 to do another, then there are n1 x n2 x n3 ways of doing
all three.
Example: you have 5 shirts and 5 pants.That means 55=25 dierent outfits. If we
also want to consider the 5 pairs of socks and 5 pairs of snickers that you have ...
you have 5x5x5x5=625 dierent outfits. Look in your closet ... how many dierent
outfits can you wear? So stop wearing the same combination every day!
Unfortunately, sometimes counting gets more complicated. We learned that whenever we want
to count things can get tricky. We need to think very clearly about what exactly we want to
count. Do we want to allow for repetition? Do we think the order we count matters? These
are all great questions.
As we discussed, the answer is quite dierent depending on the answer to these questions.
Do we allow for repetition? If yes. then things get more complicated since we need to deal
with more outcomes. Do we care about he order we choose between possible outcomes? If we
do care, we will have to deal with more outcomes than if we dont. That is why we talked
about permutations and combinations. Moreover, that is why we considered permutations
with and without repetitions.
Before we formally define these concepts, I would like to give you two examples (or ways
to think about these concepts). Suppose you are choosing a password for you email account.
Furthermore, suppose you can choose only from 1, 2 and 3 to come up with a 3-digit password.
Suppose you chose 321. Then, the order is very important since this is the only sequence that
you can use to log in. This an example of PERMUTATIONS - ORDER DOES MATTER!
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Next, consider the following example: you want to make a salad using lettuce, tomatoes
and cucumbers. Is the order you throw them in the bowl important? Most likely not. You
are going to eat the same salad no matter what order you choose.
To introduce the concepts of permutations and combinations I am going to work with a
particular example. Suppose we have 3 numbers 1, 2, 3 and we need to choose all or some of
them to form 3 or 2-digit numbers.

1.2

Permutations

When computing permutations, as I mentioned, we care about order. However, we can also
consider repetitions.
Lets consider our example. Suppose we have three numbers 1,2, 3 and we need to choose
2 of them to form a 2-digit number. Furthermore, suppose first we are allowed to use the
same number when coming up with distinct 2-digits numbers (translation: order does matter
and we allow for repetition). So lets see how many possibilities we have: (1,1), (1,2), (1,3),
(2,1), (2,2),(2,3),(3,1),(3,2),(3,3). So 9 of them. We can generalize this result. Let n=number
of objects we have (in our example the three numbers: 1,2 and 3) and r=number of objects
chosen from all the objects we have (in our case two). Then, the number of permutations with
repetition is n
r (in our example 32 =9). So, if we want to find the number of permutations
with repetition that we can form by choosing r possible objects from n objects we can
use the following formula: nr .
On the other hand, if we do no allow for repetition we have a very dierent formula. Lets
take our example we have three numbers 1,2, 3 and we need to choose 2 of them to form a
2-digit number but we are not allow to repeat any digit. Now for he first digit of the 2-digit
number we have 3 choices: 1,2,3. However, given that we chose the first digit, for the second
digit we only have 2 choices. So we have 3x2 = 6choices.We actually have a general formula
for this types of permutations (without repetition): nP r = n!/(n r)!.

1.3

Combinations

Algebra