# Choosing 5 of 40 people sitting at a circular table so that between any two are at least three other people

$40$ people sit around a circular table. In how many ways can we choose $5$ people so that between any two of them there are at least $3$ other people?

Things I have done so far: This question is a form of stars and bars problem. So consider a person $A$. The number ways that person $A$ is included is equal to $${35+5-1-3-3-3-3-3 \choose 5-1}={24 \choose 4}.$$

The answer (according to the answer key): $\frac{40}{5} {24 \choose 4}$

I don't understand where the $\frac{40}{5}$ come from.

• @Vikram: Instead of just introducing MathJax, please try to fix as many problems with the post as possible. – user642796 Jul 28 '14 at 10:38

When a seat is chosen the next three seats to the right are blocked. Assume that seat ${\bf 1}$ is chosen. Then the seats ${\bf 2}$–${\bf 4}$ are blocked, and we have to choose four more seats from the remaining $36$ seats. An admissible choice can be encoded as a binary word $w$ containing four ones and twenty zeros (the zeros are for "voluntarily" unchosen seats). There are ${24\choose 4}$ such words. After the word $w$ has been written three additional zeros are inserted after each $1$. The resulting word $\tilde w$ has length $36$ and represents an admissible choice of seats. Conversely, each admissible choice containing seat ${\bf 1}$ can be realized in this way.
Denote the total number of admissible choices by $N$. Each choice affects $5$ seats, so that $5N$ seats would be chosen when playing it all through. For symmetry reasons all seats would be chosen an equal number of times, namely ${5N\over40}$ times. Since we already know that seat ${\bf 1}$ would be chosen ${24\choose 4}$ times the total number $N$ of admissible choices is given by $$N={40\over5}\cdot{24\choose 4}=85\,008\ .$$