You have an equal number of cups and balls, each labelled from one to N. You randomly place one ball in each cup. Determine the number of possible combinations such that no balls are in the cup with a matching number. For example, if you have three balls and three cups, there are two valid solutions:
- 2, 3, 1
- 3, 1, 2
The following permutations do not meet the criteria for the reasons listed:
- 1, 2, 3 (all three balls are in the correct cups)
- 1, 3, 2 (ball 1 is in cup 1)
- 3, 2, 1 (ball 2 is in cup 2)
- 2, 1, 3 (ball 3 is in cup 3)
Good luck!
Solution Stats
Problem Comments
2 Comments
Solution Comments
Show comments
Loading...
Problem Recent Solvers56
Suggested Problems
-
2462 Solvers
-
514 Solvers
-
337 Solvers
-
Generate N equally spaced intervals between -L and L
942 Solvers
-
987 Solvers
More from this Author80
Problem Tags
Community Treasure Hunt
Find the treasures in MATLAB Central and discover how the community can help you!
Start Hunting!
I think that with this kind of problem, you can process in two steps.
A first easy problem with small N (to test perms for example). And a harder problem with big N, which
oblige to find another algorithm.
http://oeis.org/A000166