Which is Always a Natural Number?

(A new question of the week) I want to look at a question that came in recently that is, in one sense, very simple, but at the same time is quite challenging. It was given to a 12-year-old whose father asked us about it, and requires some skill in thinking about non-routine problems.

How Many Different Meals Are Possible?

(An archive question of the week) While gathering combinatorics questions, there were several that stood out. This one will serve well to summarize the topic, showing multiple methods for counting, and contrasting other kinds of problems.

Stars and Bars: Counting Ways to Distribute Items

We have been looking at ways to count possibilities (combinatorics), including a couple ways to model a problem using blanks to fill in. Today, we’ll consider a special model called Stars and Bars, which can be particularly useful in certain problems, and yields a couple useful formulas. (I only remember the method, not the formulas.)

Permutations and Combinations: Undercounts and Overcounts

(A new question of the week) We have been looking at some combinatorics questions, both easy and challenging. Some questions have come to us in recent weeks that can illustrate how to think your way through relatively difficult problems, including catching errors and interpreting a textbook’s solutions. We’ll see yet again that there are usually …

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Six Distinguishable People in Four Distinguishable Rooms

(An archive question of the week) Last time we looked at some elementary problems in combinatorics, where we counted the number of ways to choose or arrange elements of a set. Let’s look at a somewhat more complicated problem, which will demonstrate issues that come up in interpreting such a problem and in choosing a …

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Permutations and Combinations: An Introduction

We have seen a number of questions recently about combinatorics: the study of methods for counting possibilities. These topics are studied at all levels of mathematical education, from elementary (where they might just be called counting) to high school (where they are often learned along with probability) to college (where they are part of “discrete …

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Pattern and Sequence Puzzles Revisited

Back in May, I wrote about pattern and sequence puzzles, and didn’t have the space to cover all that I would have liked. It’s time to revisit the topic, looking at a couple different types of sequences, and then the “input/output” or “function” puzzles that add an extra twist to the idea.

Distances to an Arc: Exact and Approximate Formulas

(A new question of the week) It can be an interesting challenge to be presented with a formula and asked how it was derived. This becomes a bigger challenge when the formula is only approximate, so we have to figure out how to arrive at this particular approximation. But it is impressive when several different …

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