AMS 311

Fred Rispoli

Chapter 1
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 Course Info
Teaching Assistant:
– Michelle Taormina
(michelle.taormina@stonybrook.edu)
Tuesday 10:00 to 12:00 pm

• TA Office Hours in AMS Help Room (Harriman 132)

• Class notes posed on Blackboard, Documents
• Assignments posted on Blackboard, Assignments

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 Homework & Exams
• Due biweekly (roughly)
• Total of 3 assignments, with tentative due
dates: 7/15, 7/29 and 8/12
• HW must be typed and uploaded in
Blackboard
• Exams will be 7/18, 8/1 and 8/15

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 Homework Policy
Policy: You may discuss problems with other
students in this class, but you must write up your
hw completely on your own; if you do work with
other student(s), you must declare this on the cover
of your own hw, giving names of your collaborators.
(Your writings must be independent: Do not look at
another write-up, either of classmate or of anything
you find on internet when writing your own
solution. To do otherwise is a case of Academic
Dishonesty and is subject to University policy
through CASA

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 Prequisites
• Combinatorics: AMS 301
– Counting, permutations, combinations
• Introductory probability/statistics: AMS 310
– Axioms of probability, basics
– Conditional probability
– Random variables: discrete, continuous
– Expectation, variance

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 Text
• A First Course in Probability, 9th ed, by
Sheldon Ross (earlier editions will be OK for
reading assignments as well, but be aware that
example numbers and exercise numbers may not
match)
• Online resources:
– Virtual Laboratories in Probability and Statistics
– Common Probability Distributions
– Wikipedia 6
 Review of
Combinatorial Analysis
• Multiplication and Addition principles
• Permutations: n! = number of different ways
to order n distinct items in a row
– Ex: 6! = number of different spellings of
“number”
𝑛 𝑛 𝑛!
• Combinations: 𝑘
= 𝑛−𝑘
=
𝑘! 𝑛−𝑘 !
= number of different subsets of k items taken from
a set of n distinct items
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 Combinations
• Ex: 27 students in a class. How many different
committees of size 5 can be chosen?
27
– Answer: 5
=27!/5!22! = 80,730 = COMBIN(27,5)
• How many different ways to select a
committee of a president, vice-president,
treasurer, secretary, and clerk?
– Answer: 27*26*25*24*23 = 9,687,600

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 Binomial Theorem
𝑛 𝑛 𝑛
• 𝑥+𝑦 = 𝑘=0 𝑘 𝑥 𝑘 𝑦 𝑛−𝑘

𝑛 𝑛 𝑛
• 𝑥+1 = 𝑘=0 𝑘 𝑥𝑘

Ex. (x + 1)5 = 1 + 5x + 10x2 +10x3 + 5x4 + x5

What is Pascal’s Triangle?

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 Subsets
• 2n = # of different subsets (of any size) of an n-
element set
𝑛 𝑛 𝑛 𝑛
= 𝑘=0 𝑘 1k 1n-k = (1+1)n = 2n = 𝑘=0 𝑘

This follows from the Binomial Theorem,

set x = 1

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 Multinomial Coefficients
𝑛 𝑛!
• 𝑛1 𝑛2 𝑛3 ⋯𝑛𝑘
= , where 𝑖 𝑛𝑖 =𝑛
𝑛1 ! 𝑛2 !⋯𝑛𝑘 !
• = number of different “spellings” of a word
with n letters, n1 of which are the same, n2 are
the same, etc.
• Ex: How many different spellings of
“MISSISSIPPI” are there”
11! 1M
4 I’s
4 S’s
1! 4! 4! 2! 2 P’s

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