How many ways are there to choose from a deck of cards

combinatoricsdiscrete mathematics

The prompt is How many ways are there to choose 7 cards from a deck of 52 cards, given that one card from each suit must be chosen?

The way I solved this was by imagining we already took 1 card from each suit, now we are left with 3 cards to be picked from 4 suits, this can be done easily using stars and bars giving us $${{4+3-1}\choose {3}} = 20 \space ways$$
The other way that I seemed to find on the internet that also makes sense goes like this.

  • Choosing 4 from 1 suit (4+1+1+1)
    $${{4}\choose{1}}\cdot{{13}\choose{4}}\cdot{{13}\choose{1}}^3$$

  • Choosing 2 from 3 suits (2+2+2+1)
    $${{4}\choose{1}}\cdot{{13}\choose{2}}^2\cdot{{13}\choose{1}}$$

  • Choosing 3 from 1 suit and 2 from 2 other (3+2+1+1)
    $${{4}\choose{1}}\cdot{{13}\choose{4}}\cdot{{3}\choose{1}}\cdot{{13}\choose{2}}\cdot{{13}\choose{1}}^2$$

Which also makes sense but gives obviously a different answer than the first method, what am I missing? Which way is the right way?

Best Answer

The way I solved this was by imagining we already took 1 card from each suit, now we are left with 3 cards to be picked from 4 suits, this can be done easily using stars and bars giving us

Stars-and-bars counts ways to place identical items into distinct containers.   Thus it is inapplicable to counting the ways to select cards, which are distinguishable by rank.   It is the wrong way to go.


The alternative method does consider the selection of rank.   This is the right thing to do.

$7$ can be partitioned into sums of four terms as $(4+1+1+1)$, $(3+2+1+1)$, and $(2+2+2+1)$.   We count ways to select suits for each amount, and ways to select those amounts of ranks in the selected suits.

$$\binom 4 {1,3}\binom {13}4^1\binom{13}1^3+\binom{4}{1,1,2}\binom{13}3^1\binom{13}2^1\binom{13}1^2+\binom 4{3,1}\binom{13}2^3\binom{13}1^1$$

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