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Easy Permutations and Combinations

The document explains the difference between permutations and combinations. Permutations refer to ordered arrangements that consider the order of items, while combinations refer to unordered groups where the order does not matter. The key formulas provided are: Permutations of n items taken k at a time is calculated as P(n,k)=n!/(n-k)! Combinations of n items taken k at a time is calculated as C(n,k)=n!/k!(n-k)! Examples are given to illustrate the difference, such as having more possible permutations than combinations when selecting items from a group.

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39 views3 pages

Easy Permutations and Combinations

The document explains the difference between permutations and combinations. Permutations refer to ordered arrangements that consider the order of items, while combinations refer to unordered groups where the order does not matter. The key formulas provided are: Permutations of n items taken k at a time is calculated as P(n,k)=n!/(n-k)! Combinations of n items taken k at a time is calculated as C(n,k)=n!/k!(n-k)! Examples are given to illustrate the difference, such as having more possible permutations than combinations when selecting items from a group.

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chandan
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Easy Permutations and Combinations

I’ve always confused “permutation” and “combination” — which one’s which?

Here’s an easy way to remember: permutation sounds complicated, doesn’t it? And it is. With
permutations, every little detail matters. Alice, Bob and Charlie is different from Charlie, Bob
and Alice (insert your friends’ names here).
Combinations, on the other hand, are pretty easy going. The details don’t matter. Alice, Bob and
Charlie is the same as Charlie, Bob and Alice.

Permutations are for lists (order matters) and combinations are for groups (order doesn’t
matter).

Permutations: The hairy details


Let’s start with permutations, or all possible ways of doing something. We’re using the fancy-
pants term “permutation”, so we’re going to care about every last detail, including the order of
each item. Let’s say we have 8 people:

1: Alice
2: Bob
3: Charlie
4: David
5: Eve
6: Frank
7: George
8: Horatio

How many ways can we award a 1st, 2nd and 3rd place prize among eight contestants? (Gold /
Silver / Bronze)

We’re going to use permutations since the order we hand out these medals matters. Here’s how it
breaks down:

 Gold medal: 8 choices: A B C D E F G H (Clever how I made the names match up with
letters, eh?). Let’s say A wins the Gold.
 Silver medal: 7 choices: B C D E F G H. Let’s say B wins the silver.
 Bronze medal: 6 choices: C D E F G H. Let’s say… C wins the bronze.
We picked certain people to win, but the details don’t matter: we had 8 choices at first, then 7,
then 6. The total number of options was 8 * 7 * 6 = 336.

Let’s look at the details. We had to order 3 people out of 8. To do this, we started with all options
(8) then took them away one at a time (7, then 6) until we ran out of medals.

We know the factorial is:

Unfortunately, that does too much! We only want 8 * 7 * 6. How can we “stop” the factorial at
5?

This is where permutations get cool: notice how we want to get rid of 5*4*3*2*1. What’s
another name for this? 5 factorial!

So, if we do 8!/5! we get:

And why did we use the number 5? Because it was left over after we picked 3 medals from 8. So,
a better way to write this would be:

where 8!/(8-3)! is just a fancy way of saying “Use the first 3 numbers of 8!”. If we have n items
total and want to pick k in a certain order, we get:

which just means “Use the first k numbers of n!”

And this is the fancy permutation formula: You have n items and want to find the number of
ways k items can be ordered:

Combinations, Ho!
Combinations are easy going. Order doesn’t matter. You can mix it up and it looks the same.
Let’s say I’m a cheapskate and can’t afford separate Gold, Silver and Bronze medals. In fact, I
can only afford empty tin cans.

How many ways can I give 3 tin cans to 8 people?


Well, in this case, the order we pick people doesn’t matter. If I give a can to Alice, Bob and then
Charlie, it’s the same as giving to Charlie, Alice and then Bob. Either way, they’re equally
disappointed.

This raises an interesting point — we’ve got some redundancies here. Alice Bob Charlie =
Charlie Bob Alice. For a moment, let’s just figure out how many ways we can rearrange 3
people.

Well, we have 3 choices for the first person, 2 for the second, and only 1 for the last. So we have
3 * 2 * 1 ways to re-arrange 3 people.

Wait a minute… this is looking a bit like a permutation! You tricked me!

Indeed I did. If you have N people and you want to know how many arrangements there are for
all of them, it’s just N factorial or N!

So, if we have 3 tin cans to give away, there are 3! or 6 variations for every choice we pick. If we
want to figure out how many combinations we have, we just create all the permutations and
divide by all the redundancies. In our case, we get 336 permutations (from above), and we
divide by the 6 redundancies for each permutation and get 336/6 = 56.

The general formula is

which means “Find all the ways to pick k people from n, and divide by the k! variants”. Writing
this out, we get our combination formula, or the number of ways to combine k items from a set
of n:

A few examples
Here’s a few examples of combinations (order doesn’t matter) from permutations (order
matters).

 Combination: Picking a team of 3 people from a group of 10. C(10,3) = 10!/(7! * 3!) = 10
* 9 * 8 / (3 * 2 * 1) = 120.
Permutation: Picking a President, VP and Water boy from a group of 10. P(10,3) = 10!/7!
= 10 * 9 * 8 = 720.
 Combination: Choosing 3 desserts from a menu of 10. C(10,3) = 120.
Permutation: Listing your 3 favorite desserts, in order, from a menu of 10. P(10,3) = 720.

Don’t memorize the formulas, understand why they work. Combinations sound simpler than
permutations, and they are. You have fewer combinations than permutations.

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