1.10 Basic Combinatorial Analysis

Combinatorial analysis deals with counting the number of different ways in which an event of interest can occur. Two basic aspects of combinatorial analysis that are used in probability theory are permutation and combination.

1.10.1 Permutations

Sometimes we are interested in how the outcomes of an experiment can be arranged; that is, we are interested in the order of the outcomes of an experiment. For example, if the possible outcomes are A, B and C, we can think of six possible arrangements of these outcomes: ABC, ACB, BAC, BCA, CAB, and CBA. Each of these arrangements is called a permutation. Thus, there are six permutations of a set of three distinct objects. This number can be derived as follows: There ...

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