Number of submatrices of a matrix

(Not on homework or exams)

Suppose A is an m × n matrix. A submatrix of A is obtained by crossing out
some of the rows and columns of A. A basic combinatorial problem is to count the
number of submatrices of a matrix A (assuming all the entries of A are distinct). For
example, if  
1 2
A= ,
3 4







then the
    submatrices
 of A are ( ), 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 1 2 , 3 4 ,
1 2 1 2
, , and . So, there are 10 submatrices.
3 4 3 4

Claim: there are (2n − 1)(2m − 1) + 1 submatrices of an m × n matrix with distinct

entries.

Proof: Let A be an m × n matrix with distinct entries. For each row/column, you
can either choose to keep the row/column or throw the row/column out. So for each
row/column there are 2 choices. However, there is a bit of overlap in the following
sense: if you throw out every row, or throw out every column, then the submatrix
is empty. So, there are 2m − 1 ways to throw out some, but not all, of the m rows,
and 2n − 1 ways to throw out some, but not all, of the columns. Hence there are
(2n − 1)(2m − 1) different ways to form a submatrix which is not empty. Then we
include the empty submatrix in our count, making the total (2n − 1)(2m − 1) + 1.

Interesting problem for you: how many submatrices are there of a fixed size? For
example, how many 2 × 2 submatrices are there of a 3 × 3 matrix? In general, how
many k × l submatrices
are there of an m × n matrix? You may find the choose
function useful, i.e. ab is the number of ways to choose b objects out of a set of a
objects.