[Math] Combinatorial Probability Question

combinationsprobability

Found this one in Fundamentals of Probability by Saeed Ghahramani

"A class contains 30 students. What is the probability that there are six months each containing the birthdays of two students, and six months each containing the birthdays of three students? Assume that all months have the same probability of including the birthday of a randomly selected person."

In counting the number of ways the above scenario could occur I think should use a multinomial but my results are getting screwed up.

I figure you pick 3 students for each of the six months and then 2 students for each of the remaining six months. Assuming we can distinguish the students, we can do this
$$\dfrac{30!}{(3!)^6(2!)^6}$$
many ways. This is where I get stuck: I know I don't want to divide by $12^{30}$, since that will count order, but I also don't want to divide by $\binom{30+12-1}{30}$, since that assumes indistinguishability among the students.

Can I get a hint?

Best Answer

Line up the students in order of Student Number. For each of them, write down the birth month. Under our assumption, there are $12^{30}$ equally likely sequences.

Now we count the sequences that satisfy our condition. There are $\binom{12}{6}$ ways to choose the months that have $2$ birthdays.

For definiteness concentrate on the choice January through June. There are $\binom{30}{12}$ ways to choose the students who will have birthdays in this set of months, and there are then $\frac{12!}{2^6}$ ways to assign them to the individual months. And for each of these ways, there are $\frac{18!}{(3!)^6}$ ways to choose the students who will have birthdays in the various remaining months.

It remains to put the pieces together.

Remark: Your analysis is along the right lines. One thing that is missing is the term $\binom{12}{6}$ representing the choice of months that will have two birthdays. But apart from that slip your analysis is more efficient than mine.

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