Revision as of 04:52, 24 September 2008 by Kduhon (Talk)

OK, so we need to put 5 indistinguishable objects into 3 indistinguishable boxes.

The easiest way to do this is to just list the different possibilities.


 5        0        0
 4        1        0
 3        2        0
 3        1        1
 2        2        1

Each column is a box and each row is a possibility. Notice that I did not label the boxes, this is because they are indistinguishable. This makes it so I do not have to list 5-0-0, 0-5-0, and 0-0-5 as separate possibilities. They are all the same. Also, options like 4-1-0 only has one possibility because the objects are also indistinguishable so it doesn't matter which object is separate from the others.

Add up these possibilities and we get 5 ways.

--Kduhon 09:52, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

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