Number of combinations

Question

Given the following letters in a license plate, how many combinations of them can you create

AAAA1234

Please note that this is not a homework question (I am too old for college :)

I am only trying to understand permutations and combinations. I always get lost when I see questions like this. Do I use n! or nPr or nCr.

Any book on this subject in addition to the logic used to arrive at the answer will also be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

I have faith in exactly one method to remember such formulas: Rethink through the reasoning to justify it as needed. Then, each time you need the formula, remembering it becomes a mental exercise that makes it easier to remember it the next time. It also allows you to know the math on your own authority, instead of someone else's authority.

If the letters are all different, then there are n choices for the first letter, n-1 choices for the second letter, and so on. That makes n! However, in your problem the letters are not all different. One trick is to tag them to make them different so that you are overcounting, then divide by the amount that you are overcounting. If a of the symbols are A, then you can tag them in a! ways. They are then all different, so that the answer to the modified question is n!. So the answer to the original question is n!/a! (This is assuming that the symbols other than the A are fixed, distinct numbers.)

Another argument is to count the positions for the numbers. There are n positions for the 1, n-1 positions for the 2, etc., so you get n(n-1)...(n-r+1) = n!/a!, where r = n-a.

In fact the answer is the same as the permutation formula nPr. And your arrangements are much the same as partial permutations, which is what the formula is for. But you'll learn it better if you reason through it before looking at the formula.

As for books, I might suggest Brualdi, Introductory Combinatorics.