How many wrong envelopes?

An individual has written 7 letters to each of 7 different friends and addressed the 7 corresponding envelopes. How many different ways are there to place every letter into a wrong envelope?


The answer is 1854.

This section requires Javascript.
You are seeing this because something didn't load right. We suggest you, (a) try refreshing the page, (b) enabling javascript if it is disabled on your browser and, finally, (c) loading the non-javascript version of this page . We're sorry about the hassle.

1 solution

Hongqi Wang
Dec 9, 2020

Let S n S_n is the total cases for total n n letters in n n envelopes, and F n F_n is the cases for all of them in wrong envelope.

Obviously S n = n ! S_n = n! , and F 1 = 0 F_1 = 0 and F n F_n will be total cases minus exact 1~n letters in correct envelope respectively but all others are in wrong (the case for all letters in correct envelope always is 1). i.e. F n = S n i = 1 n 1 ( ( i n ) F n i ) 1 \\ F_n = S_n - \sum\limits_{i=1}^{n-1} (\tbinom{i}{n} \cdot F_{n-i}) - 1

i i S i S_i F i F_i
1 1 0
2 2 1
3 6 2
4 24 9
5 120 44
6 720 265
7 5040 1854

You must use the word “Derangement” in your answer.

Vijay Simha - 6 months ago

0 pending reports

×

Problem Loading...

Note Loading...

Set Loading...