Olympiad Maths Prep

Track / Stage 4 / 196 of 340 #456 of 2000

Problem 456

AMC 12 late, AIME early
Combinatorics Difficulty 4.9 Find the answer

A permutation of {1,,n}\{1, \ldots, n\} is drawn at random. On average, how many fixed points does it have?

Official solution

Consider an n×nn \times n table, where the rows correspond to the elements of {1,,n}\{1, \ldots, n\} and the columns to permutations. We mark a 1 in position (i,s)(i, s) if the element ii is a fixed point of the permutation ss. The number of 1s is counted:

- by rows: each element ii is a fixed point of (n1)!(n-1)! permutations,
- by columns: this is the total number of fixed points of all permutations.

Thus, a permutation of {1,,n}\{1, \ldots, n\} has on average n(n1)!n!=1\frac{n \cdot (n-1)!}{n!} = 1 fixed point.

Source: NuminaMath-1.5, licensed Apache-2.0. Statement and solution reproduced as published; topic, difficulty and ordering added by this site.