MM 225: AI and Data Science

Permutations, combinations and binomial

M P Gururajan and Hina A Gokhale

August 22, 2023

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Lecture 5: Permutations, combinations and binomial

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Outline

1 Recall

2 Birthday problem

3 Binomial coefficients

4 The icon problem

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 Recall

The problem of points

Suppose G and H are playing several games. G needs three more wins and H needs two more
wins to get the stakes. If the games are stopped at this point, what is the fair division of
stakes? Assume that the stakes are Rs. 64.

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 Recall

Pascal’s and Fermat’s solutions

Pascal: Algorithmic
Involved Pascal’s identity
Fermat: combinatoric
This lecture: binomial (Pascal’s identity) and permutations and combinations

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 Birthday problem

Birthday problem

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 Birthday problem

Questions

Question
In a class of 200 students, what is the probability that two students share the same birthday?

Question
How big should a class be so that the probability of two students sharing the same birthday is
more than 50%?

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 Birthday problem

Guess

Question
In a class of 200 students, what is the probability that two students share the same birthday?

Can we guess that this will be about 200/365 ≈ 0.548

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 Birthday problem

Answer
200
Probablity is ≈ 365 = 0.55

Link:
https://www.menti.com/alyv6higa18m

Code: Go to menti.com and use code

5529 0593

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 Birthday problem

Results

Results of the poll

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 Birthday problem

Sample space

A sequence of 200 birthdays – assuming no repetition

In other words, we find the probability that no two people have the same birthday
We get the probability that at least two share a birthday by subtracting this number from
unity!

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 Birthday problem

Number of sequences

Assume nobody is born in a leap year

There are 365 possible birthdays
First person could be born on any of the 365 days
Second person has only 364 possibilities
Third person has only 363 possibilities
... and so on
200th person has 365 − 200 + 1 = 166 possibilities
What are all the number of sequences?

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 Birthday problem

Permutation

Definition
Let A be any finite set. A permutation of A is a one-to-one mapping of A into itself.

Theorem
The total number of permutations of a set A of n elements is n!.

Definition
Let A be an n-element set and let k be an integer between 0 and n. Then a k-permutation of
A is an ordered listing of a subset of A of size k.

Theorem
n!
The total number of k-permutations of a set A of n elements is (n−k)!

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 Birthday problem

Calculation

Assume nobody is born in a leap year

There are 365 possible birthdays
What is the probability that all the birth days are distinct?
First person could be born on any of the 365 days
Second person has 364 possibilities
Third person has 363 possibilities ...
200th person has 365 − 200 + 1 = 166 possibilities

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 Birthday problem

Probability

365·364·363···166
Thus, for 200 students, the probability is 365200
The probability that two students have the same birthday is closer to 1
Note: factorial and calculation of the same using Stirling’s approximation

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 Birthday problem

Guess

Question
How big should a class be so that the probability of two students sharing the same birthday is
more than 50%?
Can we guess this number and verify the guess using a python script?

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 Binomial coefficients

Binomial coefficients

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 Binomial coefficients

Combinations

Consider a set U with n elements

Let ϕ the null set, and the set U be also considered as subsets of U
What are the number of distinct subsets of U: 2n
What are the number of distinct subsets of U that has j elements?
Answered by combinations!

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 Binomial coefficients

Binomial coefficients

n


Number of distinct subsets with j elements that can be chosen with n elements: j (n
choose j)
n


j : binomial coefficient
Assume n > 0
There is only one way to choose zero elements or n elements
For integers j and n, with 0 < j < n
Theorem
n n−1 n−1




j = j + j−1

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 Binomial coefficients

Bernoulli trials

Definition
A Bernoulli trials process is a sequence of n chance experiments such that each experiment has
two possible outcomes with probabilities of p for ‘success’ and 1 − p for ’failure’

What is the probability that in n Bernoulli trials there are exactly j successes?
Probability b(n, p, j) = nj p j q n−j

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 Binomial coefficients

Binomial distribution

Definition
Let n be a positive integer and 0 < p < 1. The random variable B which counts the number
of successes in a Bernoulli trials process with parameters n and p is distributed as binomial
distribution b(n, p, k)

Use of binomial distribution: Tutorials. For example, to check the number of trials needed to
determine the efficacy of a new medicine and simulation of Galton board

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 Binomial coefficients

A problem

G and H have given a quiz to 300 students in their data analysis course. The quiz consisted of
10 true or false questions. If the students tossed a coin to answer the questions, how many
students would have scored ten on ten? How many zero on ten? If there are about 100
students who had scored 10 on 10 and about 5 scored 0 on 10, what can you conclude about
the difficulty level of the quiz?

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 Binomial coefficients

Python to answer the question

n
p j q n−j


Probability b(n, p, j) = j
n = 10; p = 0.5; j = 0 and j = 10
from scipy.stats import binom
binom.pmf(0,10,0.5)
binom.pmf(10,10,0.5)
Probability: ≈ 0.001

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 Binomial coefficients

Python script

from scipy.stats import binom

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

x = binom.rvs(10,0.5,size=300)

plt.hist(x,bins=[0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10])
plt.show()

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 The icon problem

The icon problem

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 The icon problem

Question

I very carefully arrange the app icons on my cell phone:

Moive apps: Netflix, Google tv, Mubi, Prime Video, Disney-Hotstar, Zee 5
Entertainment apps: Alexa, fire tv, amazon music, youtube, apple music, eppo music,
pocket casts
Call taxi /auto aggregators: Uber, Ola, Namma Yatri
Food: Zwiggy, Zomato
Frequent: camera, messages, whatsapp, gmail, maps, calendar, authenticator
My niece takes my phone and randomly arranges the icons. What is the probability that none
of the icons end up at their original position? At least k of them end up in their original
position?

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 The icon problem

Fixed points

Permutations: one-to-one mapping of a set onto itself

The points that map to themselves after random permutations: fixed points
Library problem, hat check problem, ...
How to solve these problems?
Simulation! Certainly.
Exact solution?

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 The icon problem

Inclusion-Exclusion principle

Theorem
Let P be a probability measure on a sample space Ω and let (A1 , A2 , ...An ) be a finite set of
elements. Then,
n
X
P(A1 ∪ A2 ∪ · · · ∪ An ) = P(Ai ) (1)
i=1
X
− P(Ai ∩ Aj )
1≤i<j≤n
X
+ P(Ai ∩ Aj ∩ Ak )
1≤i<j<k≤n
−···

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 The icon problem

Inclusion-Exclusion principle

A generalisation of P(A ∪ B) = P(A) + P(B) − P(A ∩ B)

To find the probability that at least one event out of n events Ai occurs, add the
probability of each event, subtract the probabilities of all possible two-way interactions,
add the probability of all three-way interactions and so on.

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 The icon problem

Icon problem: solution using inclusion-exclusion principle

A: ordered set of n icons
Ai : the event that the i-th element remains fixed under permutation – a one-to-one map
of A onto itself
If ai is fixed, the remaining (n − 1) elements are arbitrarily mapped
There are (n − 1)! such permutations
P(Ai ) = (n−1)!
n! = n1
There are n choices for ai
The first term in Eq. (1) is 1
n
X
P(A1 ∪ A2 ∪ · · · ∪ An ) = P(Ai )
i=1
X
− P(Ai ∩ Aj )
1≤i<j≤n
X
+ P(Ai ∩ Aj ∩ Ak )
1≤i<j<k≤n
−···
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 The icon problem

Other terms
Let (ai , aj ) be fixed
The permutations of remaining elements is (n − 1)!
Thus P(Ai ∩ Aj ) = (n−2)!
n!
1
= n(n−1)
There are n2 such terms

The second term in Eq. (1) is thus n2 n(n−1) = n(n−1)

1 1 1
2! n(n−1) = 2!
1
Similarly, the third term is 3!
n
X
P(A1 ∪ A2 ∪ · · · ∪ An ) = P(Ai )
i=1
X
− P(Ai ∩ Aj )
1≤i<j≤n
X
+ P(Ai ∩ Aj ∩ Ak )
1≤i<j<k≤n
−···

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 The icon problem

Solution

P(at least one fixed point)

1 1 1
1− + − · · · (−1)n−1 (2)
2! 3! n!
P(no fixed point)
1 1 1
− + · · · (−1)n (3)
2! 3! n!
1
P(no fixed point) is the sum of the first n terms of the expansion for e

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 The icon problem

‘No fixed point’ as a function of n

Figure: The dotted line corresponds to e1 .

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 The icon problem

Summary

Permutations
Combinations
Bernoulli trials and binomial distribution
Next lecture: Conditional probability

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 The icon problem

THANK YOU!!!

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