Dulay, Aman Kristoffer Evan R.

March 6, 2017
MATH140-A31 Professor Velimor Almonte

1. If a Martian has an infinite number of red, blue, yellow, and black socks in a drawer, how many
socks must the Martian pull out of the drawer to guarantee he has a pair?

Answer: Let the number socks to be pulled be the pigeons, and the colors be the pigeonholes

By the Pigeonhole Principle, if there are 4 pigeonholes, then 4+1 = 5. To guarantee that
the Martian will pull out a pair he needs 5 socks.

Reference : https://www.artofproblemsolving.com/wiki/index.php/Pigeonhole_Principle/Solutions#M1

2. Show that at any party there are two people who have the same number of friends at the party
in

Answer : Let n be the number of people at the party. Each person can have 0,1,···,n−2 or n−1 friends. If
all n people had a different number of friends, then one person would have 0 friends and another would
have n − 1. This is not possible since the person with n − 1 friends is friends with everyone at the party,
including the person with 0 friends.

Reference:
https://www.math.uwaterloo.ca/~snew/Contests/ProblemSessions/Problems2016/Lesson2soln.pdf

3. Show that any subset of 55 distinct positive numbers less than 101 must contain two numbers
which differ by exactly 9.

If the 55 numbers do not include 100, we can use the pigeonholes:

{1,10}, {2,11}, . . . {9,18}

{19,28}, {20,29} . . . {27,36}
{47,46}, {38, 47} . . . {45,54}
{55,64}, {56,65} . . .{63,72}
{73,82}, {74,83} . . . {81,90}
{91,100}, {92}, {93}, {94}, {95}, {96}, {97}, {98}, {99}

There are 9*5 + 9 = 54 such pigeonholes, and 55 pigeons. Hence there is a pigeonhole with 2 pigeons

Reference: http://euclid.ucc.ie/MATHENR/Exercises/PigeonholePrinciple2Solutions.pdf
Dulay, Aman Kristoffer Evan R. March 6, 2017
MATH140-A31 Professor Velimor Almonte

4. How many students must be in the class to guarantee that at least two students receive the
same score on the final exam, if the exam is graded on the scale of from 0 to 100 points?

Answer: There are 101 possible score on the final. The pigeonhole principle shows that among any 102
students, there must be at least two students with the same score.

Reference: Knithivasaan K.(2009) , Discrete Mathematics and its Application, Global edition. mcGraw-
Hill Book Publishing Inc. p.p.388-394

5. What is the minimum number of students required in a discrete mathematica class to be graded
at least six will receive the same grade, if there are five possible grades A, B, C, D, E and F?

Answer : The minimum number of students needed to ensure that at least six students receives the
same grade is the smallest integer N such that [N/5]=6. The smallest such integer is N=5*5 +1 = 26. If
have only 25 students, it is possible for there to be five who have received each grade so that no six
students have received the same grade. Thus, 26 is the minimum number of students needed to ensure
that at leadt six students will receive the same grade.

Reference: Knithivasaan K.(2009) , Discrete Mathematics and its Application, Global edition. mcGraw-
Hill Book Publishing Inc. p.p.388-394