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Pigeonhole Principle

The document discusses the pigeonhole principle, which states that if n items are put into m boxes, with n > m, then at least one box must contain more than one item. It provides examples of how the principle can be used to prove claims in mathematics and computer science. It also lists some exercises involving applying the pigeonhole principle to prove additional statements.

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392 views10 pages

Pigeonhole Principle

The document discusses the pigeonhole principle, which states that if n items are put into m boxes, with n > m, then at least one box must contain more than one item. It provides examples of how the principle can be used to prove claims in mathematics and computer science. It also lists some exercises involving applying the pigeonhole principle to prove additional statements.

Uploaded by

nafizz
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Cihat İmamoğlu

24.11.2009 / CMPE220 / Haluk Bingöl


What is?
 A basic, almost obvious mathematical principle that
states for n items and m boxes, if n > m, then at least
one of the boxes must contain more than one item.
 A fancier explanation: there does not exist an injective
function on finite sets whose codomain is smaller than
its domain.
What is?
 Generalized pigeonhole principle: if n objects are to be
put into m containers, then at least one container must
hold no fewer than ceil(n / m) objects.
What for?
 One of the basic combinatorial principles
 Used extensively in mathematical proofs
 Arises frequently in computer science
 Hash table collisions
 Parallel computing
 ...
Example 1
 The claim: In this class, there are at least two people
who were born on the same month.
 The proof: Number of people currently in the class is
(at least “has always been”) more than 12, number of
months. Therefore, by the pigeonhole principle, the
claim is valid.
Example 2
 The claim: For every positive integer n, there is a
multiple of n that has only zeros and ones in its
decimal expansion.
 The proof: Consider the n+1 integers: 1, 11, 111, ..., 11..1
(where the last integer in this list is the integer with
n+1 ones). Because there exists n possible remainders
in division by n, and there are n+1 elements in given
number list, then, by pigeonhole principle, there must
be at least two that gives the same remainder. The
difference of these will be divisible by n, and will
consist only of zeros and ones.
Example 3
 The claim: Consider an equilateral triangle whose sides
are all 2. Among five points chosen inside the triangle,
there exists at least two with distance smaller than or
equal to 1.
 The proof: Let’s divide the bigger triangle into 4
smaller equal triangles whose sides are all 1.
Then at least two of the chosen points must
lie in the same subtriangle, where no two
points can be farther than 1.
Exercises
 Show that for any N positive integers, the sum of some
of these integers (perhaps one of the numbers itself) is
divisible by N.
 Show that among any n + 1 positive integers not
exceeding 2n, there must be an integer that divides
one of the other integers.
 Show that there exists a power of 7 whose decimal
representation ends with 0001.
“Bir koltuğa iki karpuz sığmaz.”
References
 Matematik Dünyası, 2003 Kış, “Çekmece ya da
Güvercin Yuvası İlkesi”, Haluk Oral
 "Pigeonhole principle." Wikipedia, The Free
Encyclopedia. 17 Nov 2009, 23:56 UTC. 21 Nov 2009
<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pigeonho
le_principle&oldid=326439761>.
 Discrete Mathematics and Its Applications, 6th Ed.,
Kenneth H. Rosen
 Sonlu Matematik, Refail Alizade, Ünal Ufuktepe

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