A dash of symmetry ......

Let S S be the set of all 3 3 x 3 3 matrices which have only 0 0 's and 1 1 's as entries. (The number of entries that can be 0 0 can be any integer from 0 0 to 9 9 inclusive, as is the case for the number of entries that can be 1 1 .)

The probability that a matrix, chosen at random from S S , is symmetric is a b \dfrac{a}{b} , where a a and b b are positive coprime integers. Find a + b a + b .

(This post was inspired by this question .)


The answer is 9.

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1 solution

Ww Margera
Oct 13, 2014

Fix the entries on the major diagonal and below it. The three entries above the diagonal can take a total of 8 configurations, but only 1 of them leads to a symmetric matrix. So reqd. probability is 1/8.

Nice approach 😊..... I think general probability is 1/[2^{n(n-1)/2}]

Abhinav Raichur - 6 years, 7 months ago

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