A manager of AEON department stores wants to reward five of his best employees by giving out 500 ringgit worth of RM5 AEON vouchers. Suppose the employees are identified by Employee A, Employee B, Employee C, Employee D, and Employee E. How many different distributions (we are only concerned with the number of vouchers) can the manager make if every employee receives at least one voucher and

  1. (i)  the manager just distributes the vouchers at random?

  2. (ii)  the manager makes sure that each of them receives at least 10 ringgit worth of vouchers?

  3. (iii)  the manager makes sure that nobody receives more than 200 ringgit worth of vouchers.

  4. (iv)  the manager wants his favourite employee, Employee A, to receive exactly 30 vouchers. 

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Do we assume that each of the conditions (i) - (iv) are separate and independent? That means you're expecting 4 different answers, one for each part?

I'm sorry, I don't understand your comment in relation to the question. I only want to know if there are four separate questions.

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There must be 100 vouchers because each is worth RM5 and the total value is 500 ringgits or RM500.

(i) Each employee receives at least 1 voucher, so that means there are 95 vouchers left to distribute.

We can write each distribution as {A,B,C,D,E}: starting with {0,0,0,0,95}, then {0,0,0,1,94}, {0,0,0,2,93}, ..., {0,0,0,95,0}, {0,0,1,0,94}, ..., {0,0,95,0,0}, ..., ..., {95,0,0,0,0}. So when A=B=C=0, {D,E} range from {0,95}, {1,94}, ..., to {95,0}, 96 ways. When A=B=0 and C=1, {D,E} range from {0,94} to {94,0}, 95 ways. Finally when C=95 so {C,D,E}={95,0,0} we will have covered 96+95+...+1=96*97/2=4656 ways. (The sum of the whole numbers from 1 to n is given by S=n(n+1)/2.)

That was for B=0; when B=1, {C,D,E} ranges from {0,0,94} to {94,0,0} to cover 95*96/2=4560 ways. When B=2 it's 94*95/2=4465 ways. So for A=0 we have 4656+4560+4465+...+3+1 = 96^2+94^2+...+2^2 = 4(48^2+47^2+46^2+...+2^2+1^2)=4*48*49*97/6=152096 (the sum of the squares of the whole numbers from 1 to n is given by S=n(n+1)(2n+1)/6. Also, the sum of whole numbers between 1 and n taken in pairs gives us: n(n+1)/2+(n-1)n/2 for each pair. This is n^2/2+n/2+n^2/2-n/2=n^2. For the next pair we get (n-2)^2 and so on.)

That was just for A=0! For A=1 we have {1,0,0,0,94} to {1,94,0,0,0}. This will give us 4560+4465+...+10+6+3+1 = 95^2+93^2+...+5^2+3^2+1. There is a formula for this sum. It is S=(n+1)(2n+1)(2n+3)/3, where 2n+1=95, so n=47. So for A=1, the number of ways is 48*95*97/3=147440.

For A=2 we have {2,0,0,0,93} to {2,93,0,0,0} which produces 94^2+92^2+...+4^2+2^2 = 4(47^2+46^2+...+1) = 4*47*48*95/6 = 142880.

So we alternate between two formulae as A continues to go from 3 to 95. 

More to follow...

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