A closet has 5 pairs of shoes. Find the number of ways in which 4 shoes can be chosen from it so that there will be no complete pair.
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Let A j (for 1 ≤ j ≤ 5 ) be the set of choices of four shoes that contain the j th pair of shoes. Then ∣ A j ∣ ∣ A j ∩ A k ∣ A i ∩ A j ∩ A k = ( 2 8 ) = 2 8 = 1 = ∅ 1 ≤ j ≤ 5 1 ≤ j < k ≤ 5 1 < i < j < k ≤ 5 so that ∣ A 1 ∪ A 2 ∪ A 3 ∪ A 4 ∪ A 5 ∣ = j = 1 ∑ 5 ∣ A j ∣ − j < k ∑ ∣ A j ∩ A k ∣ = 5 × 2 8 − 1 0 × 1 = 1 3 0 and hence the number of ways of choosing four shoes so that no pair has been chosen is ( 4 1 0 ) − 1 3 0 = 8 0
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No two shoes can come from the same pair, so we must select four different pairs to choose shoes from. There are 5 ways to do this (each choice of four pairs leaves out one pair).
Now, we have two choices of shoe from each of these four pairs. That means there are 2 4 ways to select one shoe from each pair.
In total, we have 5 × 2 4 = 5 × 1 6 = 8 0 ways to chose four shoes from different pairs.