Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-year-1-of-the-natural-sciences-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2011/paper-2/17/a/solution

Temporarily label the individual pieces. A random placement is a uniform injection of thirty-two distinct pieces into sixty-four squares, giving equally likely outcomes. For a colour-matching placement, the black pieces have available injections, and independently the white pieces have the same number within their disjoint set of squares. Therefore
Here . Treating same-colour pieces as indistinguishable gives the same probability, because the common within-colour labeling factors cancel. The two colour choices in the favourable count occupy disjoint square sets; no independence assumption about unrestricted placements is required.

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