In how many ways can we distribute 20 balls into 5 distinct boxes when it is required that no box remain empty and box number 2 will have no more than 10 balls?

Roselyn Daniel

Roselyn Daniel

Answered question

2022-07-15

In how many ways can we distribute 20 balls into 5 distinct boxes when it is required that no box remain empty and box number 2 will have no more than 10 balls?
Can someone explain me the steps to answer this question?
The final answer should be 19choose4 - 9choose4, if you can explain why it would really help.

Answer & Explanation

dominicsheq8

dominicsheq8

Beginner2022-07-16Added 15 answers

Step 1
There is a more complex way of doing this using generating functions, but simply speaking if there are f(n,k) ways to distribute n balls into k boxes without restrictions, you have 11 cases.
Case x is, the special box #2 will contain exactly x balls, with x an integer in [0,10].
Step 2
1. Find the desired number of ways in terms of f(n.k) for each case.
2. Compute f(n,k).
3. Add the 11 cases to get your answer.
Levi Rasmussen

Levi Rasmussen

Beginner2022-07-17Added 6 answers

Step 1
This can be rephrased as the number of non-negative integral solutions to the system:
{ x 1 + x 2 + x 3 + x 4 + x 5 = 20 1 x 1 1 x 2 10 1 x 3 1 x 4 1 x 5
Approach with stars-and-bars. First find the number of solutions where you ignore the upperbound on x 2 . Then subtract away the number of those solutions which were bad, i.e. the solutions where instead 11 x 2 . Find the number of those by perhaps using a change of variable.
The number of ways of distributing A balls into O boxes (I'm using A and O in order to hopefully avoid the confusion caused by using n,k,r as different articles use these for different things) where each box gets at least one ball can be seen via stars-and-bars to be ( A 1 O 1 ) .
Alternatively worded, the number of positive integer solutions to the system { x 1 + x 2 + + x O = A 1 x i     i is again ( A 1 O 1 )
We can see this by laying the balls out in a line (the stars). We then choose where to place dividers (the bars) between the balls to denote which balls will go into which box. Note that the condition that every box gets at least one ball makes it so that the dividers must be placed in different locations. For small example, with 5 balls and 3 boxes we could have ⋆∣⋆⋆∣⋆⋆ denoting that the first box gets one ball while the second and third boxes both get two. As there are A 1 spaces between the balls and we wish to place O 1 dividers, we arrive at the result.
Step 2
For your specific problem, if we temporarily ignore the upper bound, we have 20 balls and 5 boxes, each box must get at least one ball. By using the logic above, this gives us ( 20 1 5 1 ) = ( 19 4 ) outcomes.
Some of these are bad however in that they violated the upperbound we ignored earlier. I.e. they are those outcomes corresponding to solutions to the system
{ x 1 + x 2 + x 3 + x 4 + x 5 = 20 1 x 1 11 x 2 1 x 3 1 x 4 1 x 5
By changing variables, letting y i = x i for i = 1 , 3 , 4 , 5 and by letting y 2 = x 2 10, we get that this is equivalent to the system:
{ y 1 + y 2 + y 3 + y 4 + y 5 = 10 1 y i     i
which is again in the form that we know how to deal with, having ( 9 4 ) solutions. Remember again these are the bad solutions that we needed to remove from our earlier calculation to account for the upper bound.
This gives us a final calculation of
( 19 4 ) ( 9 4 )

Do you have a similar question?

Recalculate according to your conditions!

New Questions in Discrete math

Ask your question.
Get an expert answer.

Let our experts help you. Answer in as fast as 15 minutes.

Didn't find what you were looking for?