In how many ways can I distribute $100$ identical balls into $6$ different boxes

balls-in-binscombinationscombinatoricsdiscrete mathematics

In how many ways can I distribute $100$ identical balls into $6$ different boxes so that no box is left empty and every box contains even number of elements?

Firstly, I placed $2$ balls in every box, which covers the condition that no box is left empty and since they all have to contain even number of elements I chose $2$ balls. Now there are $88$ balls left which I have to distribute. I just don't know how to cover the condition that every box should have even number of elements? Can I for example, look at two balls as "one" ball, and distribute the "$44$" balls into $6$ boxes? Then I could use Stirling number of the second kind…

Best Answer

Are you familiar with stars and bars method?

So we have to find the number of 6-tuples $(x_1,...x_6)$ such that each $x_i$ is even number grater than $0$ and their sum is 100. So we can write each $x_i=2y_i$ and we have $$y_1+y_2+...+y_6 = 50$$

If we write $z_i= y_i-1$ we have $$z_1+z_2+...+z_6 = 44$$ and that we can write on $${44+5\choose 5}$$ ways.