Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2013/ia/paper-4/6e/i/solution

Use a stars and bars bijection. For a tuple, place stars in consecutive blocks of lengths , separated by bars. The bar positions form an -element subset of . Explicitly,
They satisfy . Conversely, such a subset determines
These numbers are nonnegative and sum to , proving that the two constructions are inverse. Hence
Zero-length blocks are permitted, so the bijection also covers .

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