5.

4 DISTRIBUTIONS
How many ways are there to assign 100 different diplomats to five different continents?

How many ways if 20 diplomats must be assigned to each continent?

Basic Models for Distributions

Distinct Objects The process of distributing r distinct objects into n different boxes is equivalent
to putting the distinct objects in a row and stamping one of the n different box names on each
object. The resulting sequence of box names is an arrangement of length r formed from n items
(box names) with repetition.

Thus there are n × n × … × n (r ns) = nr distributions of the r distinct objects.

If ri objects must go in box i, 1 ≤ i ≤ n, then there are P(r; r1, r2, . . . , rn) distributions.
How many ways are there to assign 100 different diplomats to five different continents?
5100 such sequences.

How many ways if 20 diplomats must be assigned to each continent?

The constraint that 20 diplomats go to each continent means that each continent name should
appear 20 times in the sequence. This can be done P(100; 20, 20, 20, 20, 20) = 100!/(20!)5 ways.

How many ways are there to distribute 20 (identical) sticks of red licorice and 15 (identical) sticks
of black licorice among five children?

Identical Objects The process of distributing r identical objects into n different boxes is
equivalent to choosing an (unordered) subset of r box names with repetition from among the n
choices of boxes.
Thus there are C(r + n −1, r ) = (r + n −1)!/ r !(n −1)! distributions of the r identical objects.
How many ways are there to distribute 20 (identical) sticks of red licorice and 15 (identical) sticks
of black licorice among five children?

The ways to distribute 20 identical sticks of red licorice among five children is equal to the ways
to select a collection of 20 names (destinations) from a set of five different names with repetition.
This can be done C(20+5−1,20) = 10,626 ways.

By the same modeling argument, the 15 identical sticks of black licorice can be distributed in
C(15+5−1,15) = 3876 ways.

The distributions of red and of black licorice are disjoint procedures. The multiplication principle
applies and so the number of ways to distribute red and black licorice is 10,626 × 3876 =
41,186,376.

Remark.
Distributions of distinct objects are equivalent to arrangements
and
Distributions of identical objects are equivalent to selections
How many ways are there to distribute four identical oranges and six distinct apples (each a
different variety) into five distinct boxes? In what fraction of these distributions does each box
get exactly two objects?

There are C(4+5−1, 4) = 70 ways to distribute four identical oranges into five distinct boxes and
56 = 15,625 ways to put six distinct apples in five distinct boxes.
These two processes are disjoint, and so there are 70×15,625 = 1,093,750 ways to distribute the
four identical and six distinct fruits.

For each box get exactly two objects, we need to consider the following 3 cases:

Case 1 Two (identical) oranges in each of two boxes and no oranges in the other 3 boxes.
The two boxes to get the pair of oranges can be chosen in C(5, 2) = 10 ways,
and the six (distinct) apples can then be distributed in those three other boxes, two to a box, in
P(6; 2, 2, 2) = 90 ways.
So Case 1 has 10 × 90 = 900 possible distributions.
Case 2 Two (identical) oranges in one box, one orange in each of two other boxes, and the
remaining two boxes empty.
The one box with two oranges can be chosen C(5, 1) = 5 ways, and the two boxes with one
orange can be chosen in C(4, 2) = 6 ways
[or combining these two steps, we can think of arranging the numbers 2, 1, 1, 0, 0, among the
five boxes in P(5; 1, 2, 2) = 30 ways].
Then the two boxes still empty will each get two apples and the two boxes with one orange will
get one apple. Thus, six distinct apples can then be distributed in P(6; 2, 2, 1, 1) = 180 ways, for a
total of 5×6×180 = 5400 ways.

Case 3 One orange each in four of the five boxes.

This can be done in C(5, 4) = five ways, and then the apples can be distributed in P(6; 2, 1, 1, 1, 1)
= 360 ways, for a total of 5 × 360 = 1800 ways.

Summing these cases, there are 900+5400+1800 = 8100 distributions with two objects in each
box.
The fraction of such distributions among all ways to distribute the four oranges and six apples is
8100/1,093,750 = .0074.
Compute the number of ways to distribute r identical balls into n distinct boxes with
• at least one ball in each box
• at least r1 balls in the first box, at least r2 balls in the second box, . . . , and at least rn balls in
the nth box

First put one ball in each box. Then it remains to count the ways to distribute without restriction
the remaining r − n balls into the n boxes.
If xi = 3, it means 3 objects are distributed in ith box.
12 objects need to be distributed in 4 identical boxes. So, the number of integer solutions is
C(12+4−1, 12) = 455.

Solutions with xi ≥ 1 correspond to putting at least one object in each box.

From previous slide, answer is C(12 − 1, 4 − 1) = 165.

For the last case, from the previous slide, answer is C((12 − 2 − 2 − 4) + 4 − 1, 4 − 1) = C(7, 3) =
35.

Remark. Equations with integer-valued variables are called diophantine equations.

They are named after the Greek mathematician Diophantus, who studied them 2,250
years ago.
What fraction of binary sequences of length 10 consists of a (positive) number of 1s, followed
by a number of 0s, followed by a number of 1s, followed by a number of 0s? An example of
such a sequence is 1110111000.

There are 210=1024 10-bit binary sequences.

We model the problem of counting this special type of 10-bit binary sequences as a
distribution problem as follows.
We create four distinct boxes, the first box for the initial set of 1s, the second box for the
following set of 0s, and so on. We have 10 identical markers (call them xs) to distribute into the
four boxes. Each box must have at least one marker, since each subsequence of 0s or of 1s must
be nonempty.

The number of ways to distribute 10 xs into four boxes with no box empty is C(10−1, 4−1) = 84.
So there are 84 such binary sequences and thus 84/1024 ≈ 8% of all 10-bit binary sequences are
of this special type.
How many arrangements of the letters a, e, i, o, u, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x (eight xs) are there if no
two vowels can be consecutive?