Counting the story

Combinatorics is one of my favourite topics in discrete maths – that topic which is all about counting the number of ways there are to choose, arrange, allocate or combine things. I like the idea that I could theoretically find out the answer by writing down all the possibilities systematically and literally counting them, but that I can also come up with a quick calculation that produces the same answer by just applying some creative thought. It's this creativity in particular that appeals to me, so much so that I don't call it combinatorics, but "creative counting".

The titles of the two blog posts in the series are

  • Counting the story
  • A story instead of stars and bars
Tagged in Thoughts about maths thinking