Problem

Source: Switzerland - Swiss TST 2004 p1

Tags: combinatorics, Sum, Subsets



Let $S$ be the set of all n-tuples $(X_1,...,X_n)$ of subsets of the set $\{1,2,..,1000\}$, not necessarily different and not necessarily nonempty. For $a = (X_1,...,X_n)$ denote by $E(a)$ the number of elements of $X_1\cup ... \cup X_n$. Find an explicit formula for the sum $\sum_{a\in S} E(a)$