Question

How many ways are there to distribute 40 jelly beans among 4 children?

Answer 1

I think it might just be 4^40 ways since each time you give any 1 child a jelly bean you have 4 choices, and then you repeat this process 39 more times.

Answer 2

@perl

Answer 3

Seems correct to me tbh

Answer 4

Like the logic you have used seems correct. Like for every jelly bean there are 4 choices and there are a total of 40 jelly beans so U r correct

Answer 5

lets see

Answer 6

there are 43 choose 40 ways to distribute 40 jelly beans among 4 children

Answer 7

here is why

Answer 8

ok..

Answer 9

Lets look at a simpler case

You have 5 jellybeans, how many ways to distribute it among 3 friends

I will represent the jellybeans by 'x'

Here are some examples

x0x0xxx

xx0xx0x



the 0's separate the x's which represent jellybeans into 3 partitions

Answer 10

@Jhannybean does this make sense

Answer 11

then we count how many ways can we order x0x0xxx , this is like MISSISSIPPI , 11!/ (4!*4!*2!)

Answer 12

we have 7! / (5! 2! )

Answer 13

but that is equal to 7 choose 5