Dividing 30 Balls

There are 30 balls as follows:

  • 5 identical white balls
  • 10 identical black balls
  • 15 identical red balls.

How many ways are there to divide these balls into 2 boxes A and B such that each box contains 15 balls?

64 66 69 72

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4 solutions

Ivan Koswara
Feb 15, 2014

Distribute the white balls and the black balls in any fashion. Since they add up to 15 15 balls, it's impossible for a box to be overfilled, and hence every arrangement of them is valid. The red balls fill in the rest, completing each box to 15 15 balls each.

Now, there are 6 6 ways to distribute the white balls (one way for each of 0 , 1 , 2 , , 5 0,1,2,\ldots,5 balls in box A), and similarly 11 11 ways to distribute the black balls (one way for each of 0 , 1 , 2 , , 10 0,1,2,\ldots,10 balls in box A), so in total there are 6 11 = 66 6 \cdot 11 = \boxed{66} ways to distribute the balls.

That's a very nice way to think about it! I completely missed this simple approach.

Calvin Lin Staff - 7 years, 3 months ago

can you explain it through any example except this question ??

Rishabh Jain - 7 years, 3 months ago

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This method works as long as at least half of the balls are the same color. Let's take a simpler example: 10 10 red balls and 20 20 black balls distributed in two boxes equally ( 15 15 balls each, but of whatever color).

Throw away the black balls. We now only have 10 10 red balls. But each box can carry 15 15 balls, so we don't have to worry about hitting our limit. So we can put the red balls in whatever fashion we like.

After this, we take back the black balls. We need to have each box to be 15 15 balls, so we simply fill in the black balls appropriately. For example, if we have put 7 7 red balls in the first box and 3 3 in the second, in order to get two equal boxes, we need to put 8 8 black balls in the first box and 12 12 black balls in the second box.

So now we can ignore the black box and the equal-division condition. We now need to put 10 10 red balls into two boxes. There are 11 11 ways to do so: put some amount of red balls into the first box, some of 0 , 1 , 2 , , 10 0,1,2,\ldots,10 , and the rest will go to the second box.

Similar reasoning applies here.

Ivan Koswara - 7 years, 3 months ago

Is there any other way to solve this question? (Let say the number of white and black balls exceed half the total number of balls)

Happy Melodies - 7 years, 2 months ago

The question can be solved using generating functions without painstaking calculations . We can associate the generating functions A x = 1 + x + . . . + x 5 = x 6 1 x 1 A_x=1+x+...+x^5=\frac{x^6-1}{x-1} B x = 1 + x + . . . + x 10 = x 11 1 x 1 B_x=1+x+...+x^{10}=\frac{x^{11}-1}{x-1} C x = 1 + x + . . . + x 15 = x 16 1 x 1 C_x=1+x+...+x^{15}=\frac{x^{16}-1}{x-1} to the sets of balls. Solving the question comes down to finding the coefficient of x 15 x^{15} since deciding the configuration of box A determines box B's one (there are only 30 balls).

We will write the product A x B x C x = ( x 16 1 ) ( x 11 1 ) ( x 6 1 ) ( x 1 ) 3 A_xB_xC_x= \frac{(x^{16}-1)(x^{11}-1)(x^6-1)}{(x-1)^3} in a nicer way. Multiplying out the numerator gives x 11 + x 6 1 x^{11}+x^6-1 , ignoring the terms of degree higher than 15 15 . The denominator can be written as ( 1 x ) 3 = k = 0 ( 3 + k 1 k ) ( 1 ) k ( x ) k = ( 2 2 ) + ( 3 2 ) x + ( 4 2 ) x 2 + + ( 15 + 2 2 ) x 15 + . (1-x)^{-3}= \sum_{k=0}^{\infty} {3+k-1 \choose k} \cdot (-1)^k \cdot (-x)^k = {2 \choose 2} + {3 \choose 2} x + { 4 \choose 2 } x^2 + \cdots + { 15+2 \choose 2 } x^ {15} + \cdots . Since this has to be multiplied by x 11 + x 6 1 x^{11}+x^6-1 , we are only concerned with 15 x 4 + 55 x 9 + 136 x 15 15 x^4+55x^9+136x^{15} : taking the product of those two the term of degree 15 15 coefficient's is 15 + 55 136 = 66. |15+55-136|=66.

Note: expressing ( 1 x ) 3 (1-x)^{-3} as a power series is particularly nice since ( n 2 ) {n \choose 2} is the n t h n-th triangular number, so you just have to keep summing n + 1 n+1 to the coefficient of the previous term while writing it out: ( 1 x ) 3 = 1 + 3 x + 6 x 2 + 10 x 3 + 15 x 4 + 21 x 5 + . (1-x)^{-3}=1+3x+6x^2+10x^3+15x^4+21x^5+ \dots .

R Ady
Apr 20, 2014

Here we can also use generating functions , we can write the equation as................................................................ (x^0+x^1+...+x^5) (x^0+x^1+...+x^10) (x^0+x^1+...+x^15) Solving this (1-x^6) (1-x^11) (1-x^16) (1-x)^-3 ... From this we can get the coefficient of x^15 to get the answer which is 66. This solution requires knowledge of Generating functions for Combinatorics which it is simple yet powerful.

Raj Jain
May 23, 2020

Using stars and bars method: w + b + r = 15 w + b + r = 15

In total 17 C 2 = 136 ^{17}C_2 = 136 ways to arrange them

We need to remove cases which have either w > = 6 w >= 6 or b > = 11 b > = 11 or r > = 16 r >= 16 .

Using PIE, for the above, you get total number of invalid combinations as 11 C 2 + 6 C 2 = 70 ^{11}C_2 + ^{6}C_2 = 70 .

Thus, final answer = 66 =66

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