TRINITY COLLEGE
ADMISSIONS QUIZ (MATHEMATICS 2)
DECEMBER 1997.
There are ten questions below which are on various areas of mathematics. They are of varying levels
of difficulty: some should be easy and others rather hard. You are not expected to answer all of them, or
necessarily to complete questions. You should just attempt those that appeal to you, and they will be used
as a basis for discussion in the interview that follows. You should bring the question paper with you to the
interview afterwards.
1. In a tennis tournament there are 2n participants. In the first round of the tournament, each player plays
exactly once, so there are n games. Show that the pairings for the first round can be arranged in exactly
(2n − 1)!/2n−1 (n − 1)! ways.
2. Let L1 and L2 be two lines in the plane, with equations y = m1 x + c1 and y = m2 x + c2 respectively.
Suppose that they intersect at an acute angle θ. Show that
m1 − m2
tan(θ) = .
1 + m1 m2
Rπ
3. Calculate 0
(x sin x)2 dx.
4. Of the numbers 1, 2, 3, . . . , 6000, how many are not multiples of 2, 3 or 5?
5. There is a pile of 129 coins on a table, all unbiased except for one which has heads on both sides. Bob
chooses a coin at random and tosses it eight times. The coin comes up heads every time. What is the
probability that it will come up heads the ninth time as well?
6. A packing case is held on the side of a hill and given a kick down the hill. The hill makes an angle
of θ to the horizontal, and the coefficient of friction between the packing case and the ground is µ. What
relationship between µ and θ guarantees that the packing case eventually comes to rest? Let gravitational
acceleration be g. If the relationship above is satisfied, what must the initial speed of the packing case be to
ensure that the distance it goes before stopping is d?
1
7. Let nr stand for the number of subsets of size r taken from a set of size n. (This is the number of
ways of choosing r objects from n if the order of choice does not matter. You may be more familiar with
the notation n Cr , in which case feel free to use it.) Every subset of the set {1, 2, . . . , n} either contains the
element 1 or it doesn’t. By considering these two possibilities, show that
n−1 n−1 n
+ = .
r−1 r r
By using a similar method, or otherwise, prove that
n−2 n−2 n−2 n
+2 + = .
r−2 r−1 r r
8. One end of a rod of uniform density is attached to the ceiling in such a way that the rod can swing about
freely with no resistance. The other end of the rod is held still so that it touches the ceiling as well. Then
the second end is released. If the length of the rod is l metres and gravitational acceleration is g metres per
second squared, how fast is the unattached end of the rod moving when the rod is first vertical?
9. Let M be a large real number. Explain briefly why there must be exactly one root w of the equation
M x = ex with w > 1. Why is log M a reasonable approximation to w? Write w = log M + y. Can you give
an approximation to y, and hence improve on log M as an approximation to w?
10. Twenty balls are placed in an urn. Five are red, five green, five yellow and five blue. Three balls are
drawn from the urn at random without replacement. Write down expressions for the probabilities of the
following events. (You need not calculate their numerical values.)
(i) Exactly one of the balls drawn is red.
(ii) The three balls drawn have different colours.
(iii) The number of blue balls drawn is strictly greater than the number of yellow balls drawn.