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Problem Sheet 3 - PIE

The document presents a series of combinatorial problems focusing on the Principle of Inclusion & Exclusion. It includes various scenarios involving sports participation, student class enrollment, language study overlaps, and mathematical properties of sets and integers. Each problem requires the application of combinatorial principles to find specific counts or probabilities.

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Ryan Azim Shaikh
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13 views1 page

Problem Sheet 3 - PIE

The document presents a series of combinatorial problems focusing on the Principle of Inclusion & Exclusion. It includes various scenarios involving sports participation, student class enrollment, language study overlaps, and mathematical properties of sets and integers. Each problem requires the application of combinatorial principles to find specific counts or probabilities.

Uploaded by

Ryan Azim Shaikh
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Problems on Combinatorics

Principle of Inclusion & Exclusion


Selected by Amitabha Tripathi

1. In a club there are 10 people who play tennis, 15 who play squash and 12 who play badminton. Of these,
5 play tennis and squash, 4 play tennis and badminton and 3 play squash and badminton. and of these
just 2 people play all three sports. How many people play at least one of the three sports?
2. There are 20 students participating in an after-school program offering classes in yoga, bridge, and
painting. Each student must take at least one of these three classes, but may take two or all three.
There are 10 students taking yoga, 13 taking bridge, and 9 taking painting. There are 9 students taking
at least two classes. How many students are taking all three classes?
3. Each of the 2025 students at a high school studies either Spanish or French, and some study both. The
number who study Spanish is between 80% and 85% of the school population, and the number who
study French is between 30% and 40%. Let m be the smallest number of students who could study both
languages, and let M be the largest number of students who could study both languages. Find M − m.
4. Let A and B be subsets of {1, . . . , n} such that |A| = a, |B| = b and |A ∩ B| = c. Determine the number
of subsets of {1, . . . , n} that are subsets of neither A nor B.
5. How many integers from the set {2, . . . , 1000} are of the form nk with k > 1?

6. Call a number prime-looking if it is composite but not divisible by 2, 3 or 5. The three smallest prime-
looking numbers are 49, 77 and 91. There are 168 prime numbers less than 1000. How many prime-looking
numbers are there less than 1000?
7. Each unit square of a 3 × 3 unit-square grid is to be colored either blue or red. For each square, either
color is equally likely to be used. The probability of obtaining a grid that does not have a 2 × 2 red
square is mn , where m and n are relatively prime positive integers. Find m + n.

8. Show that the number of onto mappings from {1, . . . , m} to {1, . . . , n} is given by
       
m n m n m n m n−1 n
n − (n − 1) + (n − 2) − (n − 3) + · · · + (−1) 1m .
1 2 3 n−1

9. Show that the number of permutations of {1, . . . , n} such that 1 ̸→ 1, 2 ̸→ 2, 3 ̸→ 3, . . . , n ̸→ n is given


by
(−1)n
 
1 1 1 1
n! − + − + ··· + .
0! 1! 2! 3! n!

10. Let m be a positive integer with distinct prime divisors p1 , . . . , pn . Show that the number of positive
integers in the set {1, . . . , m} which are relatively prime to m equals
   
1 1
m 1− ··· 1 − .
p1 pn

♣ ♣ ♣

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