[Math] How many ways can $5$ rings be placed on $4$ fingers

combinatorics

I've been trying to solve this problem and I am kind of struggling with it and with other combinatorics problems. Could you check and see if i did it right?

Given problem:

  1. How many ways can 5 rings be placed 4 fingers if the rings are all the same?
  2. What if the rings are all distinct?

Answer:

  1. I used the formula $\tbinom{n+k-1} k$ because I assumed that the question is saying that order doesn't matter and repetition is allowed; therefore I',m using that formula. By using that formula I have come up with this: $\tbinom{5+4-1}4 = \tbinom 8 4=\tfrac {8!}{4!(8-4)!}$

  2. Since the rings are distinct (meaning different), i used $n^k$ to compute it: $5^4$

Could anyone check if I did it right or wrong? If wrong, could you correct it and tell me how to solve it correctly? Because I really want to understand what I did wrong and know how to solve it correctly. Thank you so much.

Best Answer

In the first case, if you are assuming all five rings are worn, you're close; you just mixed up your $n=4$ and $k= 5$. For the first: we can look at this as the number of ways to sum 4 non-negative integers to equal $5$: $$\underbrace{f_1 + f_2 + f_3 + f_4}_{n = 4\;\text{fingers}} = \underbrace{5}_{5\; \text{rings}}$$ where the $f$'s stand for fingers (four of them), and the 5 is the number of rings. This gives us: $$\binom{4 + 5 -1}{5} = \binom{8}{5} = \dfrac{8!}{5!3!} = \dfrac{8\cdot 7\cdot 6}{3\cdot 2 \cdot 1} = 56\;\;\text{combinations}$$

In the second case, there is no assumptions being made by your method: counting every possible way of wearing no ring, one ring...5 rings, on any one or more fingers gives us $5^4$ ways of wearing distinct rings, or no ring at all.

If you want to require that all rings be worn, as in case one, then we multiply the result of $(1)$ by $k! = 5!$, which gives all permutations of the rings, as they are distinct, and can thus be rearranged: that gives us $$(5!)\binom{4 + 5 -1}{5} = (5!)\binom{8}{5} = (5!)\dfrac{8!}{5!3!} = (5!)\dfrac{8\cdot 7\cdot 6}{3\cdot 2 \cdot 1} = (5!)56\;\;$$

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