Finding the number of non-neg integer solutions?

Question

How would I find the number of non negative integer solutions to this problem? $$x_1 + x_2 + x_3 + x_4 = 12$$ if $0 \leq x_1 \leq 2$.

Answer 1

Without the restriction on $x_1$ this is a standard stars-and-bars question and can be answered using the formula (or the reasoning) at the link. However, the resulting count will include the unwanted solutions that have $x_1>2$. You can finish the problem by counting these and subtracting that number from the number of unrestricted solutions.

To count the solutions with $x_1>2$, let $y_1=x_1-3$, $y_2=x_2$, $y_3=x_3$, and $y_4=x_4$. Then each solution to $$x_1+x_2+x_3+x_4=12\tag{1}$$ with $x_1>2$ corresponds to a solution to $$y_1+y_2+y_3+y_4=9\tag{2}$$ with no upper limit on any of the variables, and vice versa. (In all cases I’m assuming that the solutions must be in non-negative integers.) Thus, you need only get the number of unrestricted solutions to $(1)$ and subtract from it the number of unrestricted solutions to $(2)$, and you’ll have the number of solutions to $(1)$ with $x_1\le 2$.

Answer 2

$$x_1 + x_2 + x_3 + x_4 = 12, 0 \leq x_1 \leq 2$$ According to http://oeis.org/wiki/User:Adi_Dani_/Restricted_compositions_of_natural_numbers there is derived formula $${\binom{m}{k}}_{s}=\sum_{i=0}^{m}(-1)^{i}\binom{m}{i}\binom{m+k-si-1}{m-1}\,$$ for number of solutions of $$x_0+x_1 + x_2 +...+ x_{m-1} =k,0\leq x_i\leq s-1$$

in our case $k=12,s=3,m=4$ $${\binom{4}{12}}_{3}=\sum_{i=0}^{4}(-1)^{i}\binom{4}{i}\binom{15-3i}{3}=$$ $$=\binom{4}{0}\binom{15}{3}-\binom{4}{1}\binom{12}{3}+\binom{4}{2}\binom{9}{3}-\binom{4}{3}\binom{6}{3}+\binom{4}{4}\binom{3}{3}=$$

$$=\binom{15}{3}-4\binom{12}{3}+6\binom{9}{3}-4\binom{6}{3}+\binom{3}{3}$$

Answer 3

Hint: Consider the following $3$ cases.

$x_1=0$, $x_1=1$ and $x_1=2$.

Now you have reduced the problem to a standard distribution question where $$x_2+x_3+x_4=12,11,10 \; \; \forall x_2,x_3,x_4 \in \mathbb{N_0^+}$$

Answer 4

This can be boiled down to the stars and bars problem: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stars_and_bars_%28combinatorics%29

Let us consider just the case where $x_1 = 0$ Then $x_2 + x_3 + x_4 = 12$ Imagine there are 12 "stars" on the table. We need all the possible ways of putting 2 bars within these stars. From the wiki article, this is equal to: $\binom{2+12-1}{12}$

Similarly, do this work for $x_1 = 1$ and $x_1 = 2$

Answer 5

The number of solutions $\def\N{\mathbf N}(x_1,x_2,x_3,x_4)\in\N^4$ to $x_1+x_2+x_3+x_4=k$ is the coefficient of $X^k$ in the power series expansion of $\frac1{(1-X)^4}$, which coefficient is $(-1)^k\binom{-4}k=\binom{k+3}k$, which is also $\binom{k+3}3$ if $k\geq0$. If you want to limit one variable to being${}<m$ (with $m>0$), just observe that the number of solutions of the problem which have $x_1\geq m$ equals the number of (unrestricted) solutions to $x_1+x_2+x_3+x_4=k-m$. You need to subtract these, so you get as number of solutions for the restricted problem $$ \binom{k+3}k - \binom{k-m+3}{k-m} \qquad\text{which is also $\dbinom{k+3}3-\dbinom{k-m+3}3$ if $m\leq k$.} $$ Now plug in $k=12$ and $m=3$ to obtain $\binom{15}3-\binom{12}3=235$.