The problem that we were doing in class

Deepak Bal
Recall that we were trying to prove the following statement
1.8.34 20 people are sitting around a table. How many ways can we choose 3 people, no two of
whom are neighbors.
Here are three solutions. The rst of which follows Shainas idea of inclusion-exclusion. This is
really the one I think you should understand and that we should have done in class.
Solution 1. (Inclusion-Exclusion) To make things simpler, assume all addition on indices is done
modulo 20 (e.g., 20+1 = 1 for us). Let the set of people be P = {1, 2, . . . , 20} and let =
_
P
3
_
.
(Recall this is the collection of 3-subsets of P.) The bad events are when 2 people are chosen
next to each other. There are 20 pairs where people can be neighbors. For i = 1, . . . , 20, let
A
i
=
_
T
_
P
3
_
: i, i + 1 T
_
.
Then for i = 1, . . . , 20, |A
i
| = 18 since we must only pick the 3rd element of the 3-subset.
We also have that A
i
A
j
= for all i = j except when i and j are consecutive (think about
why this is true). For consecutive pairs, A
i
A
i+1
= {{i, i + 1, i + 2}}, so |A
i
A
i+1
| = 1.
Using the notation from class, we have that A
S
= for any S [20] with |S| 3 (why?).
Hence applying inclusion-exclusion, the desired number of ways to choose 3 people is

\
20
_
i=1
A
i

= || |A
1
| |A
2
| |A
20
| +|A
1
A
2
| +|A
2
A
3
| + +|A
20
A
1
|
=
_
20
3
_
20 18 + 20 1 = 800
Solution 2. (Big Sum) In this proof, we just sum up over the possible ways to pick the people.
Once again, let P = {1, . . . , 20} be the people at the table. We may pick the lowest index person
from any position up to 16. The second highest index person must have index at least 2 above the
rst person and can go up to 18. The highest index must be at least 2 above the second index and
go up to 20. However, by doing this, we have counted the case where 1 and 20 are both selected, so
1
there are 16 extraneous terms in the sum (corresponding to the 16 positions of the second person
in the case where 1 and 20 are both selected). So the desired number is
_
_
16

i=1
18

j=i+2
20

k=j+2
1
_
_
16 = 800
as Mathematica conrms. Of course you could compute this using algebra. The big sum becomes
16

i=1
18

j=i+2
19 j
and you can split that up and continue.
Solution 3. (Giving Pirates and gold a shot) Let D be the set of desired triples (selections of 3 from
20 people at the table with no two next to each other). D

= {(x, D) : D D, x D}. Then D

can be interpreted as the desired triples with one of the people set aside as special. We have

= 3 |D| .
On the other hand we can count |D

| by rst choosing the special person. Then choosing the

other two people by choosing the gaps between the people when going around clockwise from the
rst person. Let x
1
, x
2
, x
3
be the size of the gaps between the rst and second, second and third,
third and rst person respectively. Then each of these must be at least 1. So the number of ways
to choose the remaining gaps is
_
14 + 3 1
3 1
_
=
_
16
2
_
.
So

= 20
_
16
2
_
.
Hence we have
|D| =
1
3

=
20
3
_
16
2
_
= 800.
2