Would the following statement be applicable to the pigeonhole principle? Or can I simply do $100 \times 50 = 5000$?
What is least amount of students in a school to guarantee that there are at least 100 students from the same state?
Mathematics Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for people studying math at any level and professionals in related fields. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this communityWould the following statement be applicable to the pigeonhole principle? Or can I simply do $100 \times 50 = 5000$?
What is least amount of students in a school to guarantee that there are at least 100 students from the same state?
Your answer is not quite correct. The most you can have WITHOUT having 100 students from the same state is $50\cdot99=4950$; so, the minimum to guarantee it is $4950+1=4951$.
Although I didn't say 'by the Pigeonhole principle', that's what has happened here.
The minimum number to guarantee that would be $99\cdot 50+1=4951$. If you had fewer, say $4950$, then there's the possibility that there are exactly $99$ students from each state. Any one additional student from any state is enough at this point.
You can have $99$ students from each state before you get $100$ students from at least one state.
So construct a pigeon hole for each state. Then add the maximum number under the desired number to each one. So we get $99 \times 50 = 4950$ students. Then, the next one we add will push any single pigeon hole to $100$ pigeons students. So the minimum number of students for there to be 100 from at least one state is $(99 \times 50) + 1 = 4951$
Yes, assuming all the students will come from US, the college needs to have $99 (\text{number of states})+1$