Inclusion/Exclusion Principle

MAT 539

Keelia Altheimer-Bienemy
August 2, 2013

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1 Counting (the story)

I suppose it is time to introduce my little one to counting; you know the natural numbers - 1, 2, 3, and so
on. It seems that it is also time to start developing her ability to solve small problems by making choices
- eating lunch or going outside - that sort of thing. I do not wish to overload her at such a young age, but
the right to choose is imminent. What is even more important is knowing what or how many options are
available.
It is a typical morning around 11:00 and she is getting cranky, so I ask Would you like to lie down for a
while, read a book, or watch Elmo? So, how many choices does she really have? The bigger question is
does she really care as long as she gets to watch Elmo. She has three choices, right? Not so fast! Little
people are multi-taskers too. She could choose to lie down a while, she could choose to read a book while
lying down a while, or she could choose to watch Elmo while lying down a while. Get the point. So, let
us enumerate the number of choices she actually has by using the Inclusion/Exclusion principle.

2 The Inclusion/Exclusion Principle

In combinatorics (combinatorial mathematics), the inclusion/exclusion principle is a counting technique
which generalizes the familiar method of obtaining the number of elements in the union of two finite sets;
symbolically expressed as

| A B | = | A| | B | | A B |,
where A and B are two finite sets and |S| indicates the cardinality of a set S (which may be considered as
the number of elements of the set, if the set is finite). The formula expresses the fact that if you just add
the sizes of the two sets together, the sum will be too large since some elements will be counted twice
and, to correct the result, you remove the double counting by subtracting the size of the intersection. The
principle is more clearly seen in the case of three sets, which for the sets A, B and C is symbolically
represented by

| A B C | = | A| | B | | C | | A B | | AC | | B C | | A B C |
This formula is demonstrated by the Venn diagram below.

Figure 2.1: Inclusion/exclusion illustrated by a Venn diagram for three sets, Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Let A, B, and C represent each choice set respectively. Then | A B C | is the actual set of choice(s)
to be made, | A B | enumerates the choice to lie down while also reading a book, | A C | enumerates
the choice to lie down while watching Elmo, and | B C | enumerates the choice to read a book while
watching Elmo. To count all the options, | A B C | , we first add each choice together:

| A | | B | | C | = A B C 2( A B) 2( A C) 2( B C) 3( A B C) .
However, now we have also counted the option to do two things at once; so, we must subtract them:

| A B | | AC | | B C |.
Each choice was added, and then the overlap of choices was subtracted once. So, we need to add them
again:

| A B C |.
Thus, as illustrated below in figure 2.2, we are able to calculate the union of all three choices sets using
the inclusion/exclusion principle formula for 3 sets:

| A B C | = | A| | B | | C | | A B | | AC | | B C | | A B C |
= 9 3 1 |
= 7.

Figure 2.2: Inclusion/exclusion illustrated by a Venn diagram for three sets, Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Each term of the inclusionexclusion formula gradually corrects the count until finally each portion of the
Venn diagram is counted exactly once. Of course this example is trivial with the cardinality of each being
one; however, it demonstrates the inclusion/exclusion principle in its most basic since. There are much
bigger counting problems to conquer; thus for many sets of choices, sets of students taking multiple
college classes, or etc. of relatively prime numbers the inclusion/exclusion principle allows us to
accurately enumerate the union of these sets while eliminating the over-counting when overlap occurs.

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3 Inclusion/Exclusion Principle Formulas

The name of this counting method comes from the idea that the principle is based on over-generous
inclusion, followed by compensating exclusion. When n 2 , the exclusion of the pairwise intersections is
(possibly) too severe; thus the formula is as shown with alternating signs in the theorem 1.1 below. This
formula is attributed to Abraham de Moivre; it is sometimes also named for Daniel da Silva, Joseph
Sylvester or Henri Poincar.
Theorem 1.1 (The Principle of inclusion/exclusion). Suppose we have n finite sets in a universe U of N
elements, A1 , A2 , A3 ,......, An . Then,

| A1 A2 An | = | A1 | | A2 | | An |
| A1 A2 | | A1 A3 | | An1 An |
| A1 A2 A3 | | A1 A2 A4 | | An2 An1 An |

(1) n1 | A1 A2 An |
(1) k 1 | A j1 A j2 A jk | ,
where the sum is taken over all nonempty subsets { j1 , j 2 ,..., j k } of the set {1,2,3,..., n} . The principle is
also compactly written as,
n

i 1

k 1

| Ai | = | Ai | | Ai A j |
1i j n

1i j k n

| Ai A j Ak | (1) n1 | A1 An |

(1) k 1 | Ai1 Aik | .

k 1
1i1 ik n

In words, to count the number of elements in a finite union of finite sets, first sum the cardinalities of the
individual sets, then subtract the number of elements which appear in more than one set, then add back
the number of elements which appear in more than two sets, then subtract the number of elements which
appear in more than three sets, and so on. This process naturally ends since there can be no elements
which appear in more than the number of sets in the union. In order to avoid writing out all the
intersections across all the Ai ' s , the following theorem is a slight generalization of Theorem 1.1, stated
using new notation.
Theorem 1.2 (The Principle of Inclusion/Exclusion). Let A1 , A2 , A3 ,......, An be n sets in a universe U of
N elements. Let S k be the sum of the sizes of all k-tuple intersections of the Ai ' s for 1 k n . Then,

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N ( A1 A2 An ) = N S1 S2 S3 (1)k Sk (1) n Sn .
This formula proves useful when there are many sets in U.
The Principle of Inclusion/Exclusion provides an organized method/formula of finding the number of
elements in the union of a given group of sets, the size of each set, and the size of all possible
intersections among the sets. This method of enumeration is useful in helping to solve big and small
problems of the world. Whether the choice is to watch Elmo while lying down, or to determine how
many prime numbers are less than or equal to a particular number; the Principle of Inclusion/Exclusion is
a useful counting method.

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References:
[1] Dictionary of Scientific Principles, edited by Stephen Marvin.
th
[2] Applied Combinatorics, 6 Edition, Alan Tucker. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
[3] Discrete Mathematics, by Gary Chartrand, Ping Zhang. Waveland Press, Mar 31, 2011.
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inclusionexclusion_principle
[5] http://onlinemathcircle.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/21-pie.pdf
[6] http://www.saylor.org/site/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/MA111_Wikipedia_Inclusion-Exclusion-Principle_
6.8.2012.pdf

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