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AMC Lecture 9

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23 views

AMC Lecture 9

note 9

Uploaded by

quangetc3
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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LECTURE 8

Wednesday, November 24, 2021 9:42 AM

CORECTING FOR OVERCOUNTING

Unlike complementary counting, which uses subtraction, the methods that we will discuss in this lecture use division to
correct for overcounting

1. Permutations with repeated elements:

Let start with a problem that we should (hopefully) already know how to do.

Problem : How many possible distinct arrangements are there of the letters in the word DOG?

We could list them: DOG, DGO, ODG, OGD, GDO, GOD : 6 ways

OR: We could have noticed that we have 2 ways to pick the first letter
2 ways left to pick the second
1 way to pick the third
Total: 3! = 6

The problem above is just a basic permutation problem. Let's add a new wrinkle to this type of problem.

Problem: How many possible distinct arrangements are there of the letters in the word BALL?

Note: It is not just 4!

Wrong solution: We have 4 ways to pick up the first letter


3 ways to pick up the second, and so on, for a total of 4! Possibilities

Unfortunately, this method overcounts. The reason for this is that two of our letters are the same.

Let's pretend that the two L's are different, and call them L_1 and L_2.

So In making the expected 4! Arrangements, we make both BAL_1L_2 and BAL_2L_1.

But when we remove the numbers, we have BALL and BALL, which are the same ==> We have overcounted and we need to
correct for this.

How can we do this?

AMC 8 TRI PHAN Page 1


But when we remove the numbers, we have BALL and BALL, which are the same ==> We have overcounted and we need to
correct for this.

How can we do this?

Every possible arrangement of BALL is counted twice among our arrangements of BAL_1L_2

For example, BAL_1L_2, BAL_2L_1 => BALL


BL_2AL_1, BL_1AL_2 => BLAL

Thus, to get the number of arrangements of BALL, we have to divide the number of arrangements of BAL_1L_2 by 2.

Answer:

Problem: How many distinct arrangements are there of TATTER?

Hint: If we pretend that all the T's are different, then there are …………….ways (overcounting)

However, for any give arrangement, the 3 T's can be rearranged in ………….ways

Correcting:

Problem: How many distinct arrangements are there of PAPA?

We pretend that the letters are all different, we have………………….

But how many arrangements of P_1A_1P_2A_2 correspond to a single arrangement of PAPA

AMC 8 TRI PHAN Page 2


Correcting:

Counting pairs of items

Problem: Find a formula for the sum of the first n positive integers

Problem: A round-robin tennis tournament consists of each player playing every other player exactly once. How many
matches will be held during an 8-person round-robin tennis tournament?

A) 28
B) 30
C) 50
D) 56

Sol 1: Each of the eight player plays 7 games => there are 8 x7 = 56 games (overcounting)

Correcting: Suppose two of the players are Alex and Chris.


Among Alice's 7 matches is match against Chris

Among Chris 's 7 matches is match against Alex

Okay, so when we count the total number of matches as 8 x 7 = 56, the match between Alex and Chris is counted twice

Correcting: ……

Sol2: List 7 persons as A, B,C ,D ,E, F,G

A plays ………matches

B plays………matches

AMC 8 TRI PHAN Page 3


G plays …..

Total:

Problem: A round-robin tennis tournament consists of each player playing every other player exactly once. How many
matches will be held during a n-person round-robin tennis tournament, where n >2 is an integer?

Counting with symmetries:

Problem: In how many different ways can 6 people be seated at a round table? Two seating arrangements are considered the
same, if, for each person, the person to his or her left is the same in both arrangements.

If the 6 people were sitting in a row, rather than around a table, there is …. …….arrangements (overcounting)

How many arrangements of the people from A through F correspond to the same arrangement.

AMC 8 TRI PHAN Page 4


Correcting: ………………………..

AMC 8 TRI PHAN Page 5

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