Permutations with Repeated Elements

1.

How many possible distinct arrangements are there of the letters in the

word DOG?

2.

How many possible distinct arrangements are there of the letters in the

word BALL?

3.

How many distinct arrangements are there of TATTER?

4.

How many distinct arrangements are there of PAPA?

(a)How many ways are there to arrange the letters of the word

BA1N1A2N2A3, in which the three A’s and the two N’s are considered

different?

(b)How many ways are there to arrange the letters in the word

BANANA, in which the three A’s and the two N’s are considered

identical?

2.

I have 5 books, two of which are identical copies of the same math book

(and all of the rest of the books are different). In how many ways can I

arrange them on the shelf?

3.

There are 8 pens along a wall in the pound. The pound has to allocate 4

pens to dogs, 3 to cats, and one to roosters. In how many ways can the

pound make the allocation?

1.

A round-robin tennis tournament consists of each player playing every

other player exactly once. How many matches will be held during an

8-person round-robin tennis tournament?

2.

A round-robin tennis tournament consists of each player playing every

other player exactly once. How many matches will be held during

a -person round-robin tennis tournament, where ?

A convex polygon is a polygon in which every interior angle is less than

180 degrees. A diagonal of a convex polygon is a line segment which

connects two non-adjacent vertices.

(a)How many diagonals does a convex quadrilateral have?

(b)How many diagonals does a convex pentagon have?

(c)How many diagonals does a convex hexagon have?

(d)Find a formula for the number of diagonals of a convex polygon

with sides, where is any positive integer greater than 2. Make sure

that your formula matches your answers from parts (a)—(c)

where .
1.

I have twenty balls numbered 1 through 20 in a bin. In how many ways

can I select 2 balls, if the order in which I draw them doesn’t matter?

2.

A sports conference has 14 teams in two divisions of 7. How many

games are in a complete season for the conference if each team must play

every other team in its own division twice and every team in the other

division once?

3.

How many interior diagonals does an icosahedron have?

(An icosahedron is a 3-dimensional figure with 20 triangular faces and

12 vertices, with 5 faces meeting at each vertex. An interior diagonal is a

segment connecting two vertices which do not lie on a common face.)

1.

In how many different ways can 6 people be seated at a round table?

Two seating arrangements are considered the same if, for each person,

the person to his or her left is the same in both arrangements. In other

words, the two arrangements in Figure 1 are the same.

Figure 1: Two identical 6-person seatings

2.

In how many distinct ways can 4 keys be placed on a keychain? Two

arrangements are not considered different if the keys are in the same

order (or can be made to be in the same order without taking the keys off

the chain).
1.

In how many ways can 5 keys be placed on a keychain?

2.

A Senate committee has 5 Democrats and 5 Republicans. In how many

ways can they sit around a circular table:

(a)without restrictions?

(b)if all the members of each party all sit next to each other?

(c)if each member sits next to two members of the other party?

3.

In how many ways can we seat 6 people around a circular table if Fred

and Gwen insist on sitting opposite each other?

4.

In how many ways can we seat 8 people around a circular table if Alice

and Bob won’t sit next to each other?

(a)In how many ways can the 10 kids in my class be seated in a circle if

Aubrey and Fred insist on being seated diametrically opposite each other?

(As usual, two seatings which are rotations of each other are considered

the same.)

(b)What if Betty and Guang also insist on being diametrically opposite

each other?

2.

Eight children sit together at story time. Seven children sit in a circle and

one child sits in the middle to tell the story. In how many different ways

can the children sit? (Two seatings are considered identical if the same

child is in the middle in both and each child on the outside has the same

child on his or her right in both seatings.)

In a sports league, there are 20 total teams, divided into 4 divisions of 5

teams each. Over the course of a season, each team plays each of the

other teams in its own division 3 times, and each of the other teams in

the other divisions twice. How many games does the league have in a

complete season?

4.

How many diagonals of a regular octagon are not parallel to one of the

sides?

5.

A regular tetrahedron is a triangular pyramid whose faces are all

equilateral triangles. How many distinguishable ways can we paint the

four faces of a regular tetrahedron with red, blue, green, and orange

paint such that no two faces are the same color?

I have 7 different keys: 2 for my house, 2 for my car, and 3 for my office.

I want to place these keys on a keyring such that the house keys are next

to each other and the car keys are next to each other. In how many ways

can I place the keys on the keyring? (As usual, rotations and flips of the

keyring don’t change the arrangement.)

7.

In how many ways can 8 people sit at a square table, 2 people to a side,

as shown in the diagram to the right?