337

Permutations, Combinations and

Binomial Theory
Introduction:
Any student if he is under graduated or post
graduated has a desire or obliged to study probability
theory, he must have a deep knowledge about some
mathematical subjects related to probability theory such
as permutation, combinations and the Binomial theorem
First: Permutations:
Define permutation?
It is the number of arrangements of (r) objects
chosen from (n) objects without repetition.
And we use the following formula
n
Pr = n (n-1) (n-2) (n-3) … (n – r +1) …….. (1)

Examples:
8
A Find P = 8x7x6x5x4 = 6720
520
B Find P = 20x19x18x17 = 116280
4
Note. We can use also this formula
n n
P = ‫ـــــــــــــ‬
r n-r
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The symbol n or n! Read as " n factorial "

So n! or n = n (n-1) (n-2) …… 3x2x1.
Then n! or n = n n-1

Examples: Find A 5! = 5 = 5x4x3x2x1 = 120

5 5 4
B ‫ = ــــــــ = ـــــــــــ‬5
4 4

52 52x51x50x49x48x 47
c ‫ = ــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ = ــــــــــــــ‬2598960
5 47 5x4x3x2x1x 47

7 7x6x 5 7x6x 5
d ‫ = ـــــــــــــــــ = ـــــــــــــــــ = ـــــــــــــــ‬21
7-5 5 2x 5 2x1x 5

Example: How many methods that we can arrange three

books (mathematics accounting, administration) in a
library has five bookshelves.
Solution
5
P3= 5x4x3 = 60 different methods
Example: How many methods can 4 persons sit down in
a row has 4 seats.
Solution
Number of methods to arrange 4 persons in 4 seats
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4
P = 4x3x2x1 = 24 = methods or Arrangements.
4
And we can use this formula.
n
P = n (n-1) (n-2) ….. 3x2x1 = n = n!
n
So: The number of permutations of n different
n
Items taken (n) at a time is denoted by P or n!
n
Examples: Find the values, of:-
7
A P in two ways:
3
The First = 7x6x5 = 210
The second
7 7 7 7x6x5 4
Or P = ‫ = ــــــــــــــــ = ــــــــ = ـــــــــ‬210
3 7-3 4 4

6 6 6 6 5
B = 6 = 6 or ‫ = ــــــــ = ــــــــ = ـــــــــ‬6
P
1 6-1 5 5
C Find the number of ways of choosing five people
from a group of 10 and arranging them in a line
10
Solution P = 10x9x8x7x6 = 30240 ways
5
10 10 10 10x9x8x7x6 5
Or = ‫ = ــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ = ــــــــ = ــــــــ‬30240 ways
P
5 10-5 5 5
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Example: How many numbers can be formed from

digits 3 , 5 , 7 provided that every number contains the
three digits?
Solution
3
P3 = 3! = 3x2x1 = 6 ways
So the expected numbers will be (3,5,7) , (3,7,5), (5,3,7),
(5,7,3), (7,3,5) , 7,5,3)
Special Case, or special Rule
If we have (n) objects and there is (n1), from (n) similar
and also (n2) similar and also (n3) similar.
So the number of permutations or arrangements =
n
= ‫ــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ‬
n1 x n2 x n3
Hence n = n1 + n2 + n3
Example
If you know that a lady from a high class called soso has
20 dresses, and she told us that their colors are 10 red, 4
blue, 6 yellow.
Find: The number of permutations (arrangements) in
this special case
Solution:
We will apply the previous rule =
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n
‫ ــــــــــــــــــــــــ‬hence n 20, n1 red colors = 10
n1 x n2 x n3
n2 blue colors = 4, n3 yellow color = 6.
20 20x19x18x17x16x15x14x13x12x11x 10
Then = ‫ــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ = ـــــــــــــــــــــــ‬
10x 4 x 6 10x4x3x2x1x6x5x4x3x2x1
= 1210 ways
Second: Combinations:
Define combination?
The number of choosing (r) objects selected from
(n) distinct objects without regard to order.
Example: Arranging Letters
From the four letters a , b , c , d , choose two letters
without repeating any letter
A) If order is important
B) If order is not important
Solution
A If order is important there are 4P2 = 4x3 = 12
possible selection namely
ab ac ad ba bc bd ca cb cd da db dc = 12 selection
B) If order is not important: only 6 selection listed
namely
ab ac ad ba bc bd = 6 selection only
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Notice: The symbol will use in this case is:

n n n
C = ‫ ــــــــــــــــــ‬Or P
r
r r n-r ‫ــــــــــ‬
r
r find the value of
Example: Use the previous formula to
each expression
3 3 3X2X1 = 3
A C = ‫ــــــــــــــ = ـــــــــــــــــ‬
1 1 x 3-1 1x2x1
6 6 6x5x4x 3 = 20
b C = ‫ــــــــــــــــــ = ـــــــــــــــــ‬
3 3 x 6-3 3 3
n n n 1
C C = ‫ = ــــ = ــــــــــــــــ = ـــــــــــــــــ‬1
n n x n-n n x 0 1
n n 1 n n
D C = ‫ = ـــ = ـــــــــــــــــ‬1 C = C = 1 Note
0 0 n-0 1 n 0
Example: How many ways to choose 3 persons from 7
persons to grant them an encouragement state prize in
literature.
Solution
The number of ways to choose
7
P
7 3 7x6x5
C = ‫ = ـــــــــــــ = ـــــــــ‬35 ways
3 3 3x2x1
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7 7 7x6x5x 4
Another solution C = ‫ـــــــــــــــــ = ـــــــــــــ‬
3 3 7-3 3 x 4
7x6x5
= ‫ = ـــــــــــــ‬35 ways
3x2x1
Example: In Elhoda factory, we find in the purchase
department that there is 10 men and 5 ladies. How many
ways can we form a committee consists of 4 persons
provided that:-
1- Number of men equal number of ladies In the
committee.
2- The committee contains at least two men.
3- The committee contains two members or less from
men.
4- The committee contains less than two members from
men.
5- The committee contains two ladies at the most
6- The committee contains more than two ladies
7- The committee contains two ladies and more
Solution
1- Number of men equal number of ladies In the
committee.
10 5 10x9 5x4
C x C = ‫ ــــــــــ‬x ‫ = ـــــــــ‬45x10=450 ways
2 2 2x1 2x1
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2- The committee contains at least two men.

The word at least means increasing in number.
SO: The committee must contain two or three or four
men.
Hence The number of ways to choose the committee =
10 5 10 5 10 5
CxC+ C x C + C x C
2 2 3 1 4 0

10x9 5x4 10x9x8 5 10x9x8x7

‫ ــــــــــ‬x ‫ ـــــــــ‬+ ‫ ــــــــــــــ‬x ‫ ـــ‬+ ‫ ـــــــــــــــــــ‬x1 =
2x1 2x1 3x2x1 1 4x3x2x1
= 450+600+210=1260 ways
3- The committee contains two members or less from
men
10 5 10 5 10 5
The number of ways = C x C + C x C + C x C
2 2 1 3 0 4
10x9 5x4 10 5x4x3 5x4x3x2
‫ ــــــــــ‬x ‫ ــــــــ‬+ ‫ ــــــ‬x ‫ ــــــــــــ‬+ 1 x ‫ــــــــــــــــــ‬
2x1 2x1 1 3x2x1 4x3x2x1
= 450+100+5=555 ways
4- The committee contains less than two members from
men.
10 5 10 5
The number of ways = C x C + C x C
1 3 0 4
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5x4x3
= 10 x ‫ ـــــــــــ‬+ 1 x 5 = 100+5 = 105 ways
3x2x1
5- The committee contains two ladies at the most
Note: the word at the most means decreasing in
number
5 10 5 10 5 10
So the number of ways = C x C + C x C + C x C
2 2 1 3 0 4
5x4 10x9 5 10x9x8 10x9x8x7
= ‫ ـــــــ‬x ‫ ــــــــــ‬+ ‫ ــ‬x ‫ ــــــــــــــ‬+ 1 x ‫ـــــــــــــــــــ‬
2x1 3x2x1 1 3x2x1 4x5x2x1

= 450+600+210=1260 ways

6- The committee contains more than two ladies

5 10 5 10
So the number of ways = C x C + C x C
3 1 4 0
5x4x3 10 5x4x3x2
= ‫ ـــــــــــ‬x ‫ ــــ‬+ ‫ ــــــــــــــــ‬x 1 = 100+5=105ways
3x2x1 1 4x3x2x1
7- The committee contains two ladies and more

5 10 5 10 5 10
So the number of ways = C x C + C x C + C x C
2 2 3 1 4 0
5x4 10x9 5x4x3 10 5x4x3x2
= ‫ ـــــــ‬x ‫ ــــــــــ‬+ ‫ ــــــــــــــ‬x ‫ ــــ‬+ ‫ ـــــــــــــــــ‬x 1
2x1 2x1 3x2x1 1 4x5x2x1
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= 450+100+5=555 ways
Note: Try to verify these following mathematical
formulas by your self

n n 5 5
1- C = C so C = C =1
0 n 0 5

n n 10 10 100 100
2- C = C so C = C also C = C
r n-r 8 2 98 2

Third: Binomial Theorem

Introduction
When we demand from our students who are
interested in studying mathematics to find the
expansions of the following expressions.
Such as (x + y)2 , (x + y)3 , (x + y)4
Any person can obtain the expansions using traditional
multiplication and the final results will be the following.
(x + y)2 = x2 + 2xy + x2
Also (x + y)3 = (x + y) (x +y)2 = x3 + 3 x2y + 3 x y2 + y3
But (x + y)4 = (x + y)2 (x + y)2 = x4 + 4x3y + 6 x2 y +
4 xy3 + y4
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We notice: that the expansions on the right side is called

the expansion of the binomial power to the left side.
But: Let's suppose we want to obtain the expansion of
(x + y)20
In fact: to obtain the expansion of the expression
(x + y)20 by actual multiplication, it will need more
effort and tedious calculation. So it would be useful to
invent a general formula for the expansion ( x + y) n. We
found that after the eighteenth century Swiss
mathematician Jacob Bernoulli invented the Binomial
theorem that deals with the problem of expanding an
expression of the form (x + y) where n is positive
integer – negative number integer – positive Fraction –
negative Fraction, without multiplication operations .
The binomial theorem generalize this pattern
Binomial Theorem
If n is a positive number Integer
n n n
(X + A)n = Xn + C A1 xn-1 + C A2 x n-2 + C A.3 x n-3 +….
1 2 3
n
+ ……. + C Ar x n-r + …….. An
r
The general Term:
The general term is of order (x + y)n and its value is
n
Tr +1 = C yr xn-r
1
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n
Tr+1 = C (2nd term) r ( 1st term) n-r
1
Observe:
1- The power of (x) of the first term begins at n and
decreasing by 1
2- The power of A (The second term) begins with Zero
and increase by 1
Example 1 : by using Binomial theorem find the
expansion of (4 + 2y)4
Solution
4 4
(4 + 2y)4 = (4)4 + C (2y)1 (4)3 + C (2y)2 (4)2 +
1 2
4 4
C (2y)4 (4)1 + C (2y)4 (4)zero
3 4
4 4x5
= 256 + ‫ ــ‬x 2y x 64 + ‫ ــــــ‬x 4y2 x 16 +
1 2x1

4x3x2 4x3x2x1
‫ ــــــــــــــ‬x 8y3 x 4 + ‫ ـــــــــــــــــ‬x 16y4 x 1
3x2x1 4x3x2x1
= 256 + 512y + 384y2 + 128y3 + 16y4.
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Example 2 : Expand (x+A)6 using the binomial

Theorem
Solution
6 6 6
(x + A)6 = x6 + c A1 x5 + c A2x4 + c A3 x3 +
1 2 3
6 6 6
c A4 x2 + c A5 x + c A6 x0
4 5 6
= x6 + 6Ax5 + 15A2x4 + 20A3x3 + 15A4x2 +
6A5x + A6
Example 3 Find the coefficient of A4x3 in the
expansion (x + A)7
Solution
The expansion of (x + A)7 is :
7 7 7
(x + A)7 = x7 + CA1x6 + C A2x5 + C A3x4 +
1 2 3
7 7 7 7
C A4x3 + C A5x2 + C A6x1 + C A7x0
4 5 6 7
7 7 7x6x5
Then: the coefficient of A x5 is C = C = ‫ = ــــــــــــ‬35
4 5
4 3 3x2x1
n n
As C =C
r n-r
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The expansion of (X-A)n

n n n
= xn - C A1 xn-1 + C A2 xn-2 - C A3xn-3 + ……
1 2 3
Important notice: We notice at the previous expansion
that every term in it has the same numerical value in the
expression of (x+A)n, but Except for signs of every
term that begins with positive and negative respectively
.
SO: The odd terms begin with positive and the
even terms begin with negative.
Now: we will present important remarks about the
expansion of (x+A)n.
1- The number of terms in the expansion in the right
side is one more than exponent n . For example the
expansion of (x+A)2 contains 3 terms, (x+A)3
contains 4 terms, and so on In general the expansion
of (x+A)n will consist of (n+1) terms.
2- The first term in the expansion of (x+A)n is xn. For
example the first term in the expansion of (x+A) 3 is
x3 and so on similarly the last term in the expansion
of (x+A)n is An.
3- As we move from one term to the next in the
expansion the exponent of x decreasing by 1, while
the exponent of A increasing by 1.
4- The sum of the powers of x and A in any term is
always equal to the exponent n.
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5- The coefficient of first term is equal the

n n
Coefficient of the last term because C = C .
0 n
Finding the expansion of binomial theory if the
exponent negative proper number, or, positive or
negative Fraction. We will apply the following
formula:
We will apply the following formula
n(n-1) n(n-1)(n-2)
(1+x) = 1 + n x + ‫ ــــــــــــ‬x + ‫ ـــــــــــــــــــــ‬x3+….
n 2
2x1 3x2x1
Question: When we can use this formula?
This formula can be used if we have the following
conditions:-
1- The exponent may be negative proper number, or
positive or negative fraction.
2- The first term in the expression (1+x)n equal proper
one.
3- The numerical value of the second term less than one
It means x < 1 or x less than one
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Example: 1
Find the expansion of (1+x)2using the formula of the
binomial theorem.
Solution
1 1 1( 1 -1) 1 ( 1 - 1)( 1 - 2 )
2 2 2 2 2 2 2
(1+x) = 1 + ‫ ــ‬x + ‫ ـــــــــــــــ‬x + ‫ــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ‬ x3+….
2 2x1 3x2x1
1 1 1 1
= ‫ ــ‬+ ‫ ــ‬x +‫ ـــ‬x2 + ‫ ـــ‬x3 +……….
2 2 8 16