Analyzing the Setup
Imagine you are a librarian in a world where numbers are the only books on the shelves. You have a set of digits: S={0,2,3,4,7,9}.
Your task is to arrange all possible 5-digit numbers in ascending order and find the exact position, or 'rank,' of the number 42923. This is a journey through the logic of combinatorics.
The first rule of our library is that a 5-digit number cannot start with zero. If it did, it would be a 4-digit number in disguise. Thus, our first digit must be chosen from {2,3,4,7,9}.
The Sweep of Smaller Prefixes
To find the rank of 42923, we must count every single number that comes before it. We start with the smallest possible starting digits.
Numbers starting with 2:
If the first digit is
2, the remaining four slots can be filled by any of the
6 digits because repetition is allowed. The number of such combinations is:
64=1296
These
1296 numbers are all smaller than our target.
Numbers starting with 3:
Similarly, if the first digit is
3, we again have
64=1296 possibilities. Adding these to our previous count, we have accounted for:
1296+1296=2592 numbers.
The Precision of the Prefix 4
Now we reach the numbers starting with 4. Our target 42923 also starts with 4, so we must be careful. We lock the first digit as 4 and look at the second digit.
Numbers starting with 40:
With the first two digits fixed as
40, we have three slots left, giving us:
63=216 numbers.
Numbers starting with 42:
The third digit of our target is
9. We need to count all numbers starting with
42x where
x<9. The possible values for
x are
{0,2,3,4,7}, which provides
5 options. For each option, the remaining two slots can be filled in
62=36 ways:
5×36=180 numbers.
The Final Countdown
We have fixed the prefix 429. The fourth digit of our target is 2. We need the fourth digit to be less than 2. The only option is 0.
Numbers starting with 4290:
With four slots fixed, the last slot can be any of the 6 digits, giving us 6 numbers.
The final sequence:
Finally, we look at the prefix 4292. We list them: 42920, 42922, and 42923. Our target is the 3rd number in this final sequence.
The Grand Total
Summing these up, we calculate the total rank:
1296+1296+216+180+6+3=2997
The elegance of this method lies in its structure. By breaking the problem into smaller, manageable buckets, we turn a daunting task into a simple, logical progression.
The rank of 42923 is 2997.