Combinatorics Problem Set 1

Soham Bakshi
September 2020

1. Sayantana has 6 math books and Ritabrata has 8 books. How many ways
they can exchange 3 books with each other?

2. There are 2 girls and 7 boys in a chess club. How many ways the couch can
choose a team of 4 with at least 1 girl member for a tournament?

3. How many ways can you divide 10 boys into 2 basketball teams of 5 boys
each?

n n



4. Prove that k = n−k . (try to get the intuition)

5. Suha has 6 friends. Each evening, for 5 days, she invites 3 of them so that
the same group is never invited twice. How many ways are there to do this?

6. Let S = {1, 2, . . . , 10}. How many subsets are there of S containing exactly 5
elements? How many subsets are there of S containing even number of elements?
How many subsets are there in total of S?

7. How many neckless can be made using 5 identical red beans and 2 identical
blue beans?