Timeline for Balls-and-bins type problem
Current License: CC BY-SA 2.5
16 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Feb 9, 2011 at 4:26 | answer | added | Aaron Meyerowitz | timeline score: 3 | |
| Feb 8, 2011 at 21:08 | comment | added | Louigi Addario-Berry | This is actually quite a nice question! | |
| Feb 8, 2011 at 14:04 | answer | added | JBL | timeline score: 7 | |
| Feb 8, 2011 at 11:59 | comment | added | Gerry Myerson | @Sheldon, your question is much better than I originally gave it credit for, but it's still missing one important thing, namely, any evidence that you have put any thought into it yourself. It's hard to get other people interested in a problem when it looks as though you weren't interested enough to do any work on it yourself. | |
| Feb 8, 2011 at 11:40 | history | reopened |
Douglas Zare darij grinberg Qiaochu Yuan Andrey Rekalo Andrew Stacey |
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| Feb 8, 2011 at 10:56 | comment | added | darij grinberg | This "looks like homework" / "too localized" / "give motivation" / "looks too elementary" policy is beginning to go berserk. The problem is definitely not trivial. I'd suggest the Sylvester sieve (aka principle of inclusion and exclusion) for a sum formula, but I don't know whether an explicit one exists. | |
| Feb 8, 2011 at 9:52 | comment | added | Douglas Zare | Either people have this confused with a different problem, or else there is something I am overlooking. For example, I don't see a closed form expression for the count when $k=2n$. For $n=4, k=8$, the count is $10896 = 2^4 \times 3 \times 227$. I voted to reopen. | |
| Feb 8, 2011 at 9:10 | comment | added | James Martin | Scott - what are you driving at here? You surely have something in mind when you make a comment like that, but reading the "how to ask" page doesn't make it obvious what that is. Perhaps mention what sort of revision you think is appropriate? | |
| Feb 8, 2011 at 4:44 | comment | added | S. Carnahan♦ | Sheldon, please see the "how to ask" page, and revise your question appropriately. When you have done that, you may flag the question for moderator attention. | |
| Feb 8, 2011 at 3:44 | comment | added | Sheldon | I am wondering why this question is closed? It is surely not as trivial as Gerry said in his first comment. | |
| Feb 8, 2011 at 0:44 | comment | added | Gerry Myerson | @Sergei, right you are. Apologies to all. | |
| Feb 8, 2011 at 0:10 | history | closed |
Andrey Rekalo Gjergji Zaimi Gerry Myerson David Roberts♦ Andrés E. Caicedo |
too localized | |
| Feb 8, 2011 at 0:09 | comment | added | Sergei Ivanov | @Gerry: It is not the same problem. Given these numbers, you can choose bins from each row in different ways. | |
| Feb 7, 2011 at 23:50 | comment | added | Tony Huynh | See en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multinomial_theorem?wasRedirected=true | |
| Feb 7, 2011 at 23:43 | comment | added | Gerry Myerson | So you want $n$ integers, each between 1 and $n$ (inclusive), summing to $k$, and you want to know how many ways there are to do this. It's a standard problem in introductory discrete math, and not suitable for this site. See the faq for more suitable sites, or get a good discrete math text. | |
| Feb 7, 2011 at 23:12 | history | asked | Sheldon | CC BY-SA 2.5 |