Permutations Integers 1 to 9 all even numbers stay in their natural positions

combinatoricsdiscrete mathematicspermutations

I have these questions regarding Inclusion-Exclusion Principle two of them have been bothering me. The questions goes:

How many ways can we write the numbers 1 to 9 [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9] if:

  1. All even numbers stay in their natural positions
  2. No even numbers stay in their natural positions
  3. All odd numbers stay in their natural positions
  4. No odd numbers stay in their natural positions

I solved no. 2 and 4 using the principle of inclusion-exclusion but haven't been able to solve 1 and 4. Should the answers of 2 and 4 be of help?

Best Answer

To 1:

You have five places where you can put the five odd numbers (1, 3, 5, 7 and 9):

_ 2 _ 4 _ 6 _ 8 _

So you don't need to bother about the even numbers. The number of different permutations will be: 5! = 120

To 3:

You have four places where you can put the four even numbers (2, 4, 6 and 8):

1 _ 3 _ 5 _ 7 _ 9

So you don't need to bother about the odd numbers. The number of different permutations will be: 4! = 24

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