General Counting Principles

1. One can reach Goa from Mumbai by sea, air and road. Suppose there are
2 ways by sea, 3 ways by air and 2 ways by road. Find total number of
ways to go from Mumbai to Goa.
2. Given 8 different English books, 7 different French books, and 5 different
German books: How many ways are there to select 1 book ?

3. Find the number of ordered pairs (x, y) of positive integers such that
x + y ≤ 4.
4. Find the number of ordered pairs (x, y) of integers such that x2 + y 2 ≤ 5.
5. To reach Bangalore from Mumbai one has to pass through Pune. If there
are 3 ways to travel from Mumbai to Pune, 4 ways from Pune to Bangalore
find total number of ways from Mumbai to Bangalore via Pune.
6. To reach city D from city A one has to pass through city B and city C. If
there are 2 ways to travel from A to B, 5 ways from B to C, and 3 ways
from C to D. Find total number of ways from A to D via B and C.

7. How many ways are there to pick a sequence of two different letters of the
alphabet from the word BOAT ? From MATHEMATICS ?
8. How many ways are there to pick first a vowel and then a consonant from
each of the words BOAT and MATHEMATICS ?

9. How many numbers can be formed from some or all of the digits 2,3,4,5
if no number is to have repeated digits ?
10. A new national flag is to be designed with 6 vertical stripes using some or
all of the colours yellow, green, blue and red. In how many ways can this
be done so that no two adjacent stripes have the same colour ?

11. Given 8 different English books, 7 different French books, and 5 different
German books: (i) How many ways are there to select 3 books, one of
each language ? (ii) How many ways are there to make a row of 3 books
in which exactly 1 language is missing (the order of the books makes a
difference) ?

12. A binary word or a binary sequence of length n is a sequence of length n

such that each of its terms is 0 or 1. (i) How many binary words of length
n are there ? (ii) How many binary words of length 10 begin with three
0s ? How many end with two 1s ?
13. A k-array sequence of length n is a sequence a1 , a2 , . . . , an of length n such
that each ai is in the set {1, 2, . . . , k − 1}. (i) How many k-array sequences
of length n are there ?

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14. Find number of positive divisors of 600, inclusive of 1 and 600 itself.
15. Find number of positive divisors of a positive integer n, inclusive of 1 and
n itself.

16. Let X = {1, 2, . . . , 100} and let S = {(a, b, c) | a, b, c ∈ X, a < b and a < c}.
Find |S|.
17. How many non-empty collections of letters can be formed from three A’s
and five B’s ?

18. Show that the number of ways of making a non-empty collection by choos-
ing some or all of n1 + n2 + · · · + nk objects where n1 are alike of one kind,
n2 alike of second kind, ... ,nk alike of k th kind, is

(n1 + 1)(n2 + 1) · · · (nk + 1) − 1.

19. Find total number of subsets of a set S with n elements.

20. How many 4-digit numbers with distinct digits are there?