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How many ways are there to distribute 26 identical balls

into six distinct boxes such that…
Asked 3 years, 3 months ago Active 3 years, 3 months ago Viewed 2k times

How many ways are there to distribute identical balls into distinct boxes such that:

(a) The number of balls in each box is odd

2
(b) The first three boxes contain at most balls each

I know how to write a generating function for both of these problems, but I don't know how to get
an actual number for a specific problem.
4
For part (a), I can't come up with a closed form for a generating function to make each box have
an odd number of balls.

Do I have to break part (b) into multiple cases, or is there an inclusion-exclusion trick to make it
much more manageable?

combinatorics discrete-mathematics

asked May 2 '16 at 22:24

BrianW
179 2 16

3 Answers

First problem:

4 How many ways are there to distribute identical balls into six distinct boxes such that the
number of balls in each box is odd?

Let denote the number of balls placed in the th box, . Then

Since each is a positive odd integer, for some non-negative integer .

Substituting into equation 1 and simplifying yields

1 of 1 8/27/2019, 11:27 AM