Homework

6.3 Solutions (excluding the graded problems, #2, 14, 30).

3. Since the last letter has to be a, there are really 6 letters being permuted instead
of all 7 letters. The number of permutations is P(6,6)=6! = 720.
4. b) The 3-combinations of {1, 2, 3, 4, 5} are the subsets with 3 elements: {1, 2, 3},
{1, 2, 4}, {1, 2, 5}, {1, 3, 4}, {1, 3, 5}, {1, 4, 5}, {2, 3, 4}, {2, 3, 5}, {2, 4, 5}, {3, 4, 5}
10. Six candidates names can be arranged in P(6,6)=6! = 720 ways (order matters).
13. There are two cases to count: alternating, starting with a man (MWMW) or
alternating, starting with a woman (WMWM)
Suppose the men start: There are n men, so the first slot can be filled in n ways.
There are n women so the second slot can be filled in n ways. Then there are (n-1)
men and (n-1) women left, so the next two slots are filled in (n-1) and (n-1) ways.
This continues until we are down to 1 man and 1 woman filling the last two slots.
So, by the product rule, the total ways to alternate men and women (starting with
men) is (n)(n)(n-1)(n-1)(n-2)(n-2)..(3)(3)(2)(2)(1)(1)=(n!)(n!) or (n!)^2.
Since the other case (the women start) would give the same amount of possible
seatings (n!)^2, the total number of ways to arrange the n men and n women is
(n!)^2 + (n!)^2 = 2[(n!)^2], by the Sum Rule.

16. The number of subsets of size k of a set with 10 elements is C(10, k). So when k
is each of the odd numbers 1, 3, 5, 7, 9 that are less than 10, we get this total number
of subsets, by the Sum Rule:
C(10,1)+C(10,3)+C(10,5)+C(10,7)+C(10,9)=512 subsets.
Note: You may notice this answer is exactly half of 2^10 = 1024, which counts all the
subsets of a set of cardinality 10. It can be proved that half of the subsets of any
finite set S have an even number of elements and half of the subsets of S have an odd
number of elements.
17. The number of subsets with more than 2 elements is the same as the total
number of subsets minus the number of subsets with 2 elements minus the number
of subsets with 1 element minus the number of subsets with 0 elements. This is
much easier to count than the sum of all the possible subsets with 3 or 4 or 5 or 6,
., or 100 elements.
The total number of subsets of a set with 100 elements is 2^100 (the size of the
power set). The number of subsets with 2 elements is C(100,2)=4950. The number
of subsets with 1 element is C(100,1)=100 and the number of subsets with 0
elements is C(100,0)=1 (the empty set is the only such subset).
Therefore, the number of subsets with more than 2 elements is 2^10049501001,
which is around 1.27 x 10^30.

27. a) Choosing an executive committee of 4 members is an unordered choice, so
C(25,4)=12,650.
b) Choosing a President, Vice-President, Secretary and Treasurer is an ordered
choice, so P(25,4) = 303,600. This can also be done by the product rule, with
(25)(24)(23)(22)=303,600 choices for the 4 club officers.

31. a) Counting the number of 6-letter words with exactly one vowel can be done
with the product rule, thinking of the process as having 3 tasks: Choose one slot for
the vowel to go in, choose the vowel, choose 5 consonants as the rest of the letters.
The first task can be done in 6 ways (there are 6 slots to choose from), the second
task can be done in 5 ways (there are 5 vowels to choose from), and the third task
can be done in 21^5 ways (there are 21 consonants and repetition is allowed).

The total possibilities are (6)(5)(21^5) = 122,523,030.

b) For exactly 2 vowels, the reasoning is similar to (a): Choose 2 slots out of 6 for the
vowels to go in, choose the 2 vowels out of 5 possible vowels (repetition allowed),
then choose the 4 remaining letters from the 21 consonants (repetition allowed).

C(6,2) x (5^2) x (21^4) = 72,930,375.

c) To count the words with at least one vowel, it is easier to count all the 6-letter
words, then subtract the number of words that have no vowels (all consonants).

This would give us 26^6 21^6 = 223,149,655.

d) To count the words with at least two vowels, we again start with all the 6-letter
words, then subtract the number of words with no vowels and also subtract the
number of words with exactly 1 vowel, which we found in part (a):

26^6 21^6 (6)(5)(21^5)= 100,626,625.