Combinatorics Worksheet 4a – Compositions and Partitions

1. How many partitions of 8 are there?

2. You have 5 red balls and 1 green ball. How many ways are there of putting them into 3
boxes?

3. How many ways are there of putting n balls into n boxes when exactly 2 boxes are empty?
More generally, what if k boxes are empty? (for k < n)

4. How many ways of putting 4 balls into 4 boxes if the boxes are indistinguishable?

5. Determine a recurrence relation F ( n , k ) with base cases for the number of partitions of a
number n where the numbers in the partition are only allowed to be natural numbers
greater or equal than k (i.e. the number of partitions of n is then just F (n , 1)). Use the
following as your actions for the recursive case:
a. The smallest addend (i.e. number in the addition) is k.
b. The smallest addend is strictly greater than k.

Combinatorics Worksheet 4b – Geometric Arrangements

1. How many diagonals are there on a dodecahedron (a 3D shape with 12 pentagon faces),
such that diagonals do not go across faces?

2. [Frosty Special] How many rectangles are there in a n × n square? (Hint, note that in general,
n n n n
due to the distributivity of multiplication: ∑ ∑ ai bi=
i=1 j=1
( )(∑ )
∑ ai
i=1 j=1
bi )

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