DEPARTMENT OF MATHEMATICS

Unit – II Combinatorics

Part – A
1. State the principle of mathematical induction.
2. Show that 2n>n3 , for n ¿ 10 , using induction principle
3. Use mathematical induction to prove n < 2n for all positive integers n
4. State the principle of strong induction
5. State the well-ordering property
6. Show that c(n+1 , r) = c (n,r-1)+c(n,r)
7. A label identifier, for a computer system consists of one English alphabet in capital letter followed by two
non-zero digits .If repetition of digits is allowed, how many label identifiers are possible?
8. How many different bit strings of length 7 are there?
9. How many functions are there from a set with m element to a set with n elements?
10. How many 1-1 functions are there from a set with m element to a set with n elements?
11. How many bit strings of length eight either starts with a 1 bit or end with two bits 00?
12. How many bit strings of length 4 that do not have consecutive 1 s?
13. How many students must be in a class to guarantee that at least 2 students receive the same score in the final
exam, if the exam is graded on a scale of 0 to 100 points?
14. State the pigeonhole principle
15. Find the coefficient of x10 in (1+x5+x10+……….)3
16. Find the number of unordered samples of size five(repetition allowed) from {a,b,c,d,e,f}
17. What is the minimum number of students required in a DM class so that at least 6 will receive the same
grade , if there are 5 possible grades A,B,C,D and E?
18. Find the number of solutions of e1 + e2 + e3 = 17 where e1 ,e2,e3 are non-negative integers with 2 ¿ e1 ¿ 5 ,
3 ¿ e2 ¿ 6 and 4 ¿ e3 ¿ 7
( m ¿ )¿ ¿¿
19. Let m be a positive integer .Let a k = ¿ , for k = 0, 1, 2………m. What is the generating function of the
sequence a0 ,a1 , ……………am ?
20. In how many ways can 8 identical cookies be distributed among 3 distinct children if each child receives at
least 2 cookies and no more than 4 cookies?
21. How many positive integers not exceeding 1000 are divisible by 7 or 11?
22. Write the generating function for the sequence of positive integers.
23. Find the recurrence relation satisfying the equation y n = A.3n + B (-4)n
24. What form does a particular solution of the linear non-homogeneous recurrence relation a n = 6 an-1 – 9 an-2 +
Fn have ? when
25. Use generating function to determine the number of ways to insert tokens worth $1 ,$2 , $5 into a vending
machine to pay for an item that costs r dollars
(i) When the order which the tokens are inserted does not matter
(ii) When the order does matter
(iii) When the order in which the tokens inserted are matters, the number of ways to insert exactly n
tokens to produce r dollars? ( Each subdivision carries 2 marks)
(i) F(n) = 3 n (ii) F(n) = n. 3 n (iii) F(n)= n2 2n (iv) F(n)= (n2 + 1) 3 n ?

PART – B

1. Prove by induction : 1 + 2 + 22 + ………….+ 2n = 2 n+1 -1

2. Prove by mathematical induction that for all n ¿ 1, n3 + 2n is a multiple of 3.
n 2
n(n+1)(2 n+1 )
∑k 6
3. Prove by induction that for n ¿ 1, k=1 =
4. Prove that 8n – 3n is a multiple of 5 by using method of induction.
 n(2 n−1)(2 n+1 )
5. Using induction prove that 12 +32 + 52+………..+(2n-1)2 = 3 .
6. A question paper has 3 parts, part –A , part-B and part –C having 12 , 4 and 4 questions respectively .A
student has to answer 10 questions from part-A and 5 questions from part-B and part-C put together selecting
at least 2 from each one of these two parts .In how many ways the selection of question can be made?
7. In a survey of 100 students , if was found that 40 studied mathematics , 64 studied physics 35 studied
chemistry , 1 studied all 3 subjects , 25 studied maths and physics , 3 studied math’s and chemistry and 20
studied physics and chemistry . Find the number of students who studied chemistry only.
8. State the generalized pigeonhole principle .Using this , find the minimum number of students in a class to be
sure that at least 3 of them are born in the same month.
9. A bit is either 0 or 1 .A byte is a sequence of 8 bits .find the number of bytes. Among these how many are
(i) Starting with 11 and ending with 00
(ii) Starting with 11 but not ending with 00 or not starting with 11 but ending with 00?
10. During a month with 30 days , a base ball team plays at least one game a day , but no more than 45
games .Show that there must be a period of some number of consecutive days during which the team must
play exactly 14 games.
11. Show that for every integer n there is a multiple of n that has only 0s and 1s in its decimal expansion.
12. Show that among any n+1 positive integers not exceeding 2n there must be an integer that divides one of the
other integers.
13. Every sequence of n2+1 distinct real numbers, contains a subsequence of length n+1 that is either strictly
increasing or strictly decreasing.
14. Find the number of primes not exceeding 100.
15. How many solutions does x1 + x2 + x3 = 11 have, where x1 , x2 ,x3 are non negative integers with x1 ¿ 3 ,x2 ¿ 4
and x3 ¿ 6 ?
16. How many positive integers less than 10, 00,000 have the sum of their digits equal to 19?
17. How many positive integers n can be formed using the digits 3 ,4 , 4 ,5 ,5 ,6 ,7 if n has to exceed 5000000?
18. Find the number of integers between 1 and 250 both inclusive that are (i) divisible by any of the integers 2, 3,
5, 7. (ii) Not divisible by any of these integers.
19. For m ∈ Z+ and m odd, prove that there exists a positive integer n such that m divides 2 n – 1.
20. Show that if any 11 numbers are chosen from the set {1, 2,………..20} then one of them will be a multiple of
another.
21. Use the generating function to solve the recurrence relation a n+2 – 8a n+1+ 15a n = 0 given that a0 = 2 , a1 = 8
22. Using the generating function , solve the difference equation y n+2 – y n+1 – 6 yn = 0 ,
y1 =1, y0 =2.

23. Solve : S(k) – 4 S(k- 1) + 4 S(k-2) = 3k + 2k, S(0) = 1 , S(1) = 1

24. Find the generating function of Fibonacci sequence
25. Solve S(n) – 2 S(n-1) – 3 S(n-2) =0 , n ¿ 2 with S(0) = 3 and S(1) = 1 by using generating function .
26. Solve Y (n) -7 Y (n-1) + 10 Y (n-2) = 6 + 8n with Y (0) = 1, Y (1) =2.
27. Solve the recurrence relation an = 2(an-1 – an-2), where n ¿ 2 and a0 = 1, a1 = 2.
28. Using the generating function solve an – 3 an-1 = n , n ¿ 1 , a0 = 1
29. Solve the following recurrence relation a n+2 – 2 a n+1 + an = 2n with a0 = 2 , a1 = 1 using generating
functions.
30. Solve the recurrence relations

S(k) – 4 S(k-1) -11 S(k-2) + 30 S(k-3) = 0 , S(0) = 0 , S( 1) = -35 , s(2) = - 85.

31. Solve the recurrence relation of the Fibonacci sequence of numbers f n = f n-1 +f n-2 ,
n >2 with the initial conditions f1 = 1, f2 = 1.