What is the kind of concentration required for RMO INMO IMO and IITJEE Advanced Mathematics?

Posted by Nalin Pithwa

Laser like concentration is a pre-requisite to genuinely creative work in math, computer science, or any other field, like chess and music. Let me illustrate a story of John Nash Jr. (Nobel Laureate, Economics, Abel Laureate genius mathematician): (Reference: A Beautiful Mind by Sylvia Nasar, Chapter 5 Genius):

KAI LAI CHUNG, a mathematics instructor who had survived the horrors of the Japanese conquest of his native China, was surprised to see the door of the Professors’ Room standing ajar. It was usually locked. Kai Lai liked to stop by on the rare occasions when it was open and nobody was about. It had the feel of an empty church, no longer imposing and intimidating as it was in the afternoons when it was crowded with mathematical luminaries, but simply a beautiful sanctuary.

The light in the west common room filtered through thick stained-glass windows inlaid with formulae: Newton’s law of gravity, Einstein’s theory of relativity, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics. At the far end, like an altar, was a massive stone fireplace. On one side was a carving of a fly confronting
the paradox of the MObius band. MObius had given a strip of paper a half twist and connected the ends, creating a seemingly impossible object: a surface with only one side. Kai Lai especially liked to read the whimsical inscription over the fire-place, Einstein’s expression of faith in science, “Der Herr Gott ist raffiniert aber Boshaft ist Er nicht,” which he took to mean that “the Lord is subtle but not malicious.”

On this particular fall morning, as he reached the threshold of the half-open door, Kai Lai stopped abruptly. A few feet away, on the massive table that dominated the room, floating among a sea of papers, sprawled a beautiful dark-haired young man. He lay on his back staring up at the ceiling as if he were outside on a lawn under an elm looking up at the sky through the leaves, perfectly relaxed, motionless, obviously lost in thought, arms folded behind his head. He was whistling softly. Kai Lai recognized the distinctive profile immediately. It was the new graduate student from West Virginia. A trifle shocked and a little embarrassed,
Kai Lai backed away from the door and hurried away before Nash could see or hear him.

************************************************************************************************

Cheers,
Nalin Pithwa

Prof. Tim Gowers’ on recognising countable sets

Posted by Nalin Pithwa

https://gowers.wordpress.com/2008/07/30/recognising-countable-sets/

Thanks Dr. Gowers’. These are invaluable insights into basics. Thanks for giving so much of your time.

Prof. Tim Gowers’ on functions, domains, etc.

Posted by Nalin Pithwa

https://gowers.wordpress.com/2011/10/13/domains-codomains-ranges-images-preimages-inverse-images/

Thanks a lot Prof. Gowers! Math should be sans ambiguities as far as possible…!

I hope my students and readers can appreciate the details in this blog article of Prof. Gowers.

Regards,
Nalin Pithwa

A Primer: Generating Functions: Part I : RMO/INMO 2019

Posted by Nalin Pithwa

GENERATING FUNCTIONS and RECURRENCE RELATIONS:

The concept of a generating function is one of the most useful and basic concepts in the theory of combinatorial enumeration. If we want to count a collection of objects that depend in some way on n objects and if the desired value is say, $\phi (n)$ , then a series in powers of t such as $\sum \phi (n) t^{n}$ is called a generating function for $\phi (n)$ . The generating functions arise in two different ways. One is from the investigation of recurrence relations and another is more straightforward: the generating functions arise as counting devices, different terms being specifically included to account for specific situations which we wished to count or ignore. This is a very fundamental, though difficult, technique in combinatorics. It requires considerable ingenuity for its success. We will have a look at the bare basics of such stuff.

We start here with the common knowledge:

$(1+\alpha_{1}t)(1+\alpha_{2}t)\ldots (1+\alpha_{n}t)=1+a_{1}t+a_{2}t^{2}+ \ldots + a_{n}t^{n}$ ….(2i) where $a_{r}=$ sum of the products of the $\alpha$ ‘s taken r at a time. …(2ii)

Incidentally, the $a$ ‘s thus defined in (2ii) are called the elementary symmetric functions associated with the $a$ ‘s. We will re-visit these functions later.

Let us consider the algebraic identity (2i) from a combinatorial viewpoint. The explicit expansion in powers of t of the RHS of (2i) is symbolically a listing of the various combinations of the $\alpha$ ‘s in the following sense:

$a_{1}=\sum \alpha_{1}$ represents all the 1-combinations of the $\alpha$ ‘s
$a_{2}=\sum \alpha_{1}\alpha_{2}$ represents all the 2-combinations of the $\alpha$ ‘s
and so on.

In other words, if we want the r-combinations of the $\alpha$ ‘s, we have to look only at the coefficients of $t^{r}$ . Since the LHS of (2i) is an expression which is easily constructed and its expansion generates the combinations in the said manner,we say that the LHS of (2i) is a Generating Function (GF) for the combinations of the $\alpha$ ‘s. It may happen that we are interested only in the number of combinations and not in a listing or inventory of them. Then, we need to look for only the number of terms in each coefficient above and this number will be easily obtained if we set each $\alpha$ as 1. Thus, the GF for the number of combinations is $(1+t)(1+t)(1+t)\ldots (1+t)$ n times;

and this is nothing but $(1+t)^{n}$ . We already know that the expansion of this gives $n \choose r$ as the coefficient of $t^{r}$ and this tallies with the fact that the number of r-combinations of the $\alpha$ ‘s is $n \choose r$ . Abstracting these ideas, we make the following definition:

Definition I:
The Ordinary Generating Function (OGF) for a sequence of symbolic expressions $\phi(n)$ is the series

$f(t)=\sum_{n}\phi (n)t^{n}$ …(2iii)

If $\phi (n)$ is a number which counts a certain type of combinations or permutations, the series $f(t)$ is called the Ordinary Enumeration (OE) or counting series for $\phi (n)$ for $n=1,2,\ldots$

Example 2:
The OGF for the combinations of five symbols a, b, c, d, e is $(1+at)(1+bt)(1+ct)(1+dt)(1+et)$

The OE for the same is $(1+t)^{5}$ . The coefficient of $t^{4}$ in the first expression is

(*) abcd+abce+ abde+acde+bcde.

The coefficient of $t^{4}$ in the second expression is $5 \choose 4$ , that is, 5 and this is the number of terms in (*).

Example 3:

The OGF for the elementary symmetric functions $a_{1}, a_{2}, \ldots$ in the symbols $\alpha_{1},\alpha_{2}, \alpha_{3}, \ldots$ is $(1+\alpha_{1}t)(1+\alpha_{2}t)(1+\alpha_{3}t)\ldots$ ….(2iv)

This is exactly the algebraic result with which we started this section.

Remark:

The fact that the series on the HRS of (2iii) is an infinite series should not bother us with questions of convergence and the like. For, throughout (combinatorics) we shall be working only in the framework of “formal power series” which we now elaborate.

*THE ALGEBRA OF FORMAL POWER SERIES*

The vector space of infinite sequences of real numbers is well-known. If $(\alpha_{k})$ and $\beta_{k}$ are two sequences, their sum is the sequence $(\alpha_{k}+\beta_{k})$ , and a scalar multiple of the sequence $(\alpha_{k})$ is $(c\alpha_{k})$ . We now identify the sequence $(\alpha_{k})$ with $k=0,1,2, \ldots$ with the “formal” series

$f = \sum_{k=0}^{\infty}\alpha_{k}t^{k}$ ….(2v)

where $t^{k}$ only means the following:

$t^{0}=1$ , $t^{k}t^{l}=t^{k+l}$ .

In the same way, $(\beta_{k})$ , where $k=0,1,2,\ldots$ corresponds to the formal series:

$g=\sum_{k=0}^{\infty}\beta_{k}t^{k}$ and

we define: $f+g = \sum (\alpha_{k}+\beta_{k})t^{k}$ , and $cf= \sum (c\alpha_{k})t^{k}$ .

The set of all power series f now becomes a vector space isomorphic to the space of infinite sequences of real numbers. The zero element of this space is the series with every coefficient zero.

Now, let us define a product of two formal power series. Given f and g as above, we write $fg=\sum_{k=0}^{\infty}\gamma_{k} t^{k}$ where

$\gamma_{k}=\alpha_{0}\beta_{k}+\alpha_{1}\beta_{k-1}+\ldots + \alpha_{k}\beta_{0} = \sum (\alpha_{i}\beta_{j})$ , where $i+j=k$ .

The multiplication is associative, commutative, and also distributive wrt addition. (the students/readers can take up this as an appetizer exercise !!) In fact, the set of all formal power series becomes an algebra. It is called the algebra of formal power series over the real s. It is denoted by $\bf\Re[t]$ , where $\bf\Re$ means the algebra of reals. We further postulate that $f=g$ in $\bf\Re[t]$ iff $\alpha_{k}=\beta_{k}$ for all $k=0,1,2,\ldots$ . As we do in polynomials, we shall agree that the terms not present indicate that the coefficients are understood to be zero. The elements of $\bf\Re$ may be considered as elements of $\bf\Re[t]$ . In particular, the unity 1 of $\bf\Re$ is also the unity of $\bf\Re[t]$ . Also, the element $t^{n}$ with $n>0$ belongs to $\bf\Re$ , it being the formal power series $\sum \alpha_{k}t^{k}$ with $\alpha_{n}=1$ and all other $\alpha$ ‘s zero. We now have the following important proposition which is the only tool necessary for working with formal power series as far as combinatorics is concerned:

Proposition : 2_4:
The element f of $\bf\Re[t]$ given by (2v) has an inverse in $\bf\Re[t]$ iff $\alpha_{0}$ has an inverse in $\bf\Re$ .

Proof:
If $g=\sum \beta_{k}t^{k}$ is such that $fg=1$ , the multiplication rule in $\bf\Re[t]$ tells us that $\alpha_{0}\beta_{0}=1$ so that $\beta_{0}$ is the inverse of $\alpha_{0}$ . Hence, the “only if” part is proved.

To prove the “if” part, let $\alpha_{0}$ have an inverse $\alpha_{0}^{-1}$ in $\bf\Re$ . We will show that it is possible to find $g=\sum \beta_{k}t^{k}$ in $\bf\Re[t]$ such that $fg=1$ . If such a g were to exist, then the following equations should hold in order that $fg=1$ , that is,

$\alpha_{0}\beta_{0}=1$
$\alpha_{0}\beta_{1}+\alpha_{1}\beta_{0}=0$
$\alpha_{0}\beta_{2}+\alpha_{1}\beta_{1}+\alpha_{2}\beta_{0}=0$
$\vdots$

So we have $\beta_{0}=\alpha_{0}^{-1}$ from the first equation. Substituting this value of $\beta_{0}$ in the second equation, we get $\beta_{1}$ in terms of the $\alpha$ ‘s. And, so on, by the principle of mathematical induction, all the $\beta$ ‘s are uniquely determined. Thus, f is invertible in $\bf\Re$ . QED.

Note that it is the above proposition which justifies the notation in $\bf\Re[t]$ , equalities such as

$\frac{1}{1-t}=1+t+t^{2}+t^{3}+\ldots$

The above is true because the RHS has an inverse and $(1-t)(1+t+t^{2}+t^{3}+\ldots)=1$

So, the unique inverse of $1+t+t^{2}+t^{3}+\ldots$ is $(1-t)$ and vice versa. Hence, the expansion of $\frac{1}{1-t}$ as above. Similarly, we have

$\frac{1}{1+t}=1-t+t^{2}-\ldots$
$\frac{1}{1-t^{2}}=1+t^{2}+t^{4}+\ldots$ and many other such familiar expansions.

There is a differential operator in $D$ in $\bf\Re[t]$ , which behaves exactly like the differential operator of calculus.

Define: $(Df)(\alpha)=\sum_{k=0}^{\infty}(k+1)\alpha_{k+1}t^{k}$

Then, one can easily prove that $D: f \rightarrow Df$ is linear on $\bf\Re[t]$ , and further
$D^{r}f(t)=\sum_{k=0}^{\infty}(k+r)(k+r-1)\ldots(k+1)\alpha_{k+r}t^{k}$ from which we get the term “Taylor-MacLaurin” expansion

$f(t)=f(0)+Df(0)+\frac{D^{2}f(0)}{2!}+ \ldots$ …(2vi)

In the same manner, one can obtain, from $f(t)=\frac{1}{1-\alpha t}$ , which in turn is equal to
$1+ \alpha t + \alpha^{2} t^{2}+ \alpha^{3} t^{3} + \ldots$

the result which mimics the logarithmic differentiation of calculus, viz.,

$\frac{(Df)(t)}{f(t)} = \alpha + \alpha^{2} t+ \alpha^{3}t^{2}+ \alpha^{4}t^{3}+\ldots$ …(2vii)

The truth of this in $\bf\Re[t]$ is seen by multiplying the series on the RHS of (2vii) by the series for $f(t)$ , and thus obtaining the series for $(Df)(t)$ .

Let us re-consider generating functions now. We saw that the GF for combinations of $\alpha_{1}, \alpha_{2}, \ldots, \alpha_{n}$ is $(1+\alpha_{1}t)(1+\alpha_{2}t)\ldots(1+\alpha_{n}t)$ .

Let us analyze this and find out why it works. After all, what is a combination of the symbols : $\alpha_{1}, \alpha_{2}, \ldots, \alpha_{n}$ ? It is the result of a decision process involving a sequence of independent decisions as we move down the list of the $\alpha$ ‘s. The decisions are to be made on the following questions: Do we choose $\alpha_{1}$ or not? Do we choose $\alpha_{2}$ or not? $\ldots$ Do we choose $\alpha_{n}$ or not? And, if it is an r-combination that we want, we say “yes” to r of the questions above and say “no” to the remaining. The factor $(1+\alpha_{1}t)$ in the expression (2ii) is an algebraic indication of the combinatorial fact that there are only two mutually exclusive alternatives available for us as far as the symbol $\alpha_{1}$ is concerned. Either we choose $\alpha_{1}$ or not. Choosing “ $\alpha_{1}$ ” corresponds to picking the term $\alpha_{1}t$ and choosing “not $-\alpha_{1}$ ” corresponds to picking the term 1. This correspondence is justified by the fact that in the formation of products in the expression of (2iv), each term in the expansion has only one contribution from $1+\alpha_{1}t$ and that is either $1$ or $\alpha_{t}$ .

The product $(1+\alpha_{1}t)(1+\alpha_{2}t)$ gives us terms corresponding to all possible choices of combinations of the symbols $\alpha_{1}$ and $\alpha_{2}$ — these are:

$1.1$ standing for the choice “not- $\alpha_{1}$ ” and “not- $\alpha_{2}$ ”

$\alpha_{1}t . 1$ standing for the choice of $\alpha_{1}$ and “not- $\alpha_{2}$ ”

$1.\alpha_{2}t$ standing for the choice of “not- $\alpha_{1}$ ” and $\alpha_{2}$ .

$\alpha_{1}t . \alpha_{2}t$ standing for the choice of $\alpha_{1}$ and $\alpha_{2}$ .

This is, in some sense, the rationale for (2iv) being the OGF for the several r-combinations of $\alpha_{1}, \alpha_{2}, \ldots, \alpha_{n}$ .

We shall now complicate the situation a little bit. Let us ask for the combinations of the symbols $\alpha_{1}, \alpha_{2}, \ldots, \alpha_{n}$ with repetitions of each symbol allowed once more in the combinations.

To be discussed in the following article,

Regards,
Nalin Pithwa.

Reference:
Combinatorics, Theory and Applications, V. Krishnamurthy, East-West Press.
Amazon India Link:
https://www.amazon.in/Combinatorics-Theory-Applications-Krishnamurthy-V/dp/8185336024/ref=sr_1_5?keywords=V+Krishnamurthy&qid=1553718848&s=books&sr=1-5

Tutorial problems for RMO 2019 : combinatorics continued

Posted by Nalin Pithwa

1) In how many ways can 5 men and 5 women be seated in a round table if no two women may be seated side by side?

2) Six generals propose locking a safe containing top secret with a number of different locks. Each general will be given keys to certain of these locks. How many locks are required and how many keys must each general have so that, unless at least four generals are present, the safe cannot be opened?

3) How many integers between 1000 and 9999 inclusive have distinct digits? Of these, how many are even numbers? How many consist entirely of odd digits?

4) In how many ways can 9 distinct objects be placed in 5 distinct boxes in such a way that 3 of these boxes would be occupied and 2 would be empty?

5) In how many permutations of the word AUROBIND do the vowels appear in the alphabetical order?

6) There is an unlimited supply of weights of integral numbers of grams. Using n or fewer weights, find the number of ways in which a weight of m grams can be obtained. Prove that there is a bijection of the set of all such ways on the set of increasing words of length $(n-1)$ or $(m+1)$ ordered letters.

7) How many distinct solutions are there of $x+y+z+w=10$ (a) in positive integers and (b) in non-negative integers?

8) A train with n passengers aboard makes m stops. In how many ways can the passengers distribute themselves among these m stops as alighting passengers? if we are concerned only with the number of alighting passengers at each stop, how would the answer be modified?

9) There are 16 books on a bookshelf. In how many ways can 6 of these books be selected if a selection must not include two neighbouring books?

10) Show that there are ${(n=5)} \choose 5$ distinct throws of a throw with n non-distinct dice.

11) Given n indistinguishable objects and n additional distinct objects —- also distinct from the earlier n objects — in how many ways can we choose n out of the 2n objects?

12) Establish the following relations:
12a) $B_{n+1}=\sum_{k=0}^{n}(B_{k}){n \choose k}$
12b) $\sum_{k}{p \choose k}{q \choose {n-k}}={{p+q} \choose n}$
12c) $S_{n+1}^{m} = \sum_{k=0}^{n}{n \choose k}S_{k}^{m-1}$
12d) $n^{p}=\sum_{k=0}^{n}{n \choose k}k! (S_{p}^{k})$

13) Prove the following identity for all real numbers x:
$x^{n}= \sum_{k=1}^{n}S_{n}^{k}[x]_{k}$

14) Express $x^{4}$ in terms of ${x \choose 4}$ , ${x \choose 3}$ , …by using the $S_{n}^{k}$ ‘s. Express ${x \choose 4}$ in terms of $x^{4}$ , $x^{3}$ , …by using the $s_{n}^{k}$ ‘s.

15) A circular loop is divided into p parts, p prime. In how many ways can we paint the loop with n colours if we do not distinguish between patterns which differ only by a rotation of the loop? Deduce Fermat’s Little theorem: $n^{p}-n$ is divisible by p if p is prime.

16) In problem 15, prove that $n^{p}-n$ is also divisible by 2p if $p \neq 2$ . Where is the hypothesis that p is prime used in Problem 15 or in this problem?

17) How many equivalence relations are possible on an n-set?

18) The complete homogeneous symmetric function of n variables $\alpha_{1}$ , $\alpha_{2}$ , $\ldots$ , $\alpha_{n}$ of degree r is defined as $h_{r}(\alpha_{1},\alpha_{2}, \alpha_{3}, \ldots, \alpha_{n})=\sum \alpha_{1}^{i_{1}}\alpha_{2}^{i_{2}}\ldots \alpha_{n}^{i_{n}}$ the summation being taken over all ordered partitions of r, where the parts are also allowed to be zero. How many terms are there in $h_{r}$ ?

Test yourself ! Improve your mettle in math !
Regards,
Nalin Pithwa.

Pre RMO or PRMO problem set in elementary combinatorics

Posted by Nalin Pithwa

1) How many maps are there from an n-set to an m-set? How many of these are onto? How many are one-one? Under what conditions?

2) Consider the letters of the word DELHI. Let us form new words, whether or not meaningful, using these letters. The *length* of a word is the number of letters in it, e.g., the length of “Delhi” is 5; the length of “Hill” is 4. Answer the following questions when (a) repetition of letters is not allowed and (b) repetition of the letters is allowed:
(i) How many words can be formed of length 1,2,3,4,…?
(ii) How many words in (i) will consist of all the letters?
(iii) How many words of the words in (i) will consist of 1,2,3,4, …specified letters?
(iv) How many of the words in (i) will consist of only 1,2,3,4,…letters?
(v) How many of the words in (i) will be in the alphabetical order of the letters?

3) Repeat Problem 2 with the word MISSISSIPPI.

4) Suppose there are 5 distinct boxes and we want to sort out 1,2,3,…,n objects into these boxes.
4i) In how many ways can this be done?
4ii) In how many of these situations would no box be empty?
4iii) In how many of the above would only 1,2,3,4 … specified boxes be occupied?
4iv) In how many would only 1,2,3,4…boxes be occupied?
4iv) If the objects are indistinguishable from one another, how would the answers to (i) to (iv) change, it at all?

If there is an added restriction that each box can hold only one object and no more, what will be the answers to (i) to (v)?

5) Repeat Problem 4 with 9 boxes.

6) Repeat Problem 4 with 5 non-distinct (=indistinguishable identical) boxes.

7) Repeat Problem 6 with 9 boxes.

8) How many 5-letter words of binary digits are there?

9) Ten teams participate in a tournament. The first team is awarded a gold medal, the second a silver medal, and the third a bronze medal. In how many ways can the medals be distributed?

10) The RBI prints currency notes in denominations of One Rupee, Two Rupees, Five Rupees, Ten Rupees, Twenty Rupees, Fifty Rupees, and One hundred rupees. In how many ways can it display 10 currency notes, not necessarily of different denominations? How many of these will have all denominations?

11) In how many ways can an employer distribute INR 100/- as Holiday Bonus to his 5 employees? No fraction of a rupee is allowed. Also, do not worry about question of equity and fairness!

12) The results of 20 chess games (win, lose, or draw) have to be predicted. How many different forecasts can contain exactly 15 correct results?

13) How many distinct results can we obtain from one throw of four dice? five dice? Can you generalize this?

14) In how many ways can 8 rooks be placed on a standard chess board so that no rook can attack another? How many if the rooks are labelled? How would the answer be modified if we remove the restriction that “no rook can attack another”?

15) Show that there are 7 partitions of the integer 5, and 33 partitions of the integer 9. How many of these have 4 parts ? How many have the largest part equal to 4? Experiment with other partitions and other numbers.

Cheers,
Nalin Pithwa.

For the love of Maths: the Queen of all Sciences

What is the kind of concentration required for RMO INMO IMO and IITJEE Advanced Mathematics?

Prof. Tim Gowers’ on recognising countable sets

Prof. Tim Gowers’ on functions, domains, etc.

A Primer: Generating Functions: Part I : RMO/INMO 2019

More tough combinatorics tutorial for RMO: continued

Tutorial problems for RMO 2019 : combinatorics continued

Pre RMO or PRMO problem set in elementary combinatorics