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Permutations
A permutation is a particular arrangement of a set
1
of objects into a particular sequence
2
. For
example for the set of colours {blue, red, green} then (red, green, blue) is a particular
permutation. In fact there are six such combinations of {blue, red, green}; (blue, red, green),
(blue, green, red), (red, blue, green), (red, green, blue), (green, blue, red) and (green, red, blue).
If we add one colour to the set, eg {blue, red, green, yellow} then there are 24 permutations:
(blue, red, green, yellow), (blue, red, yellow, green), (blue, green, red, yellow), (blue, green,
yellow, red), (blue, yellow, red, green), (blue, yellow, green, red), (red, blue, green, yellow), (red,
blue, yellow, green), (red, yellow, blue, green), (red, yellow, green, blue), (red, green, blue,
yellow), (red, green, yellow, blue), (green, blue, red, yellow), (green, blue, yellow, red), (green,
red, blue, yellow), (green, red, yellow, blue), (green, yellow, blue, red), (green, yellow, red, blue),
(yellow, blue, red, green), (yellow, blue, green, red), (yellow, red, blue, green), (yellow, red,
green, blue), (yellow, green, blue, red), (yellow, green, red, blue).
In general if the number of elements of the set is n then the number of permutations is n! (n
factorial
3
). For example with 3 elements the number of permutations is 3!=6 and with 4
elements the number of permutations is 4!=24.
When permuting a set of n elements there are effectively n possibilities in choosing the first
element in the sequence. Having chosen the first element there are n-1 possibilities for the
second element. Continuing in this way until there are two elements available, there are 2
possibilities for the penultimate element, and when that is chosen there is only one element left
to form the final element in the sequence. Hence the number of possible sequences from a set of
n elements is n(n-1)2x1=n!.
Given that for a set of n elements has n! permutations then the probability
4
of any one
permutation is . For example out of a the set of three elements {blue, red, green} then the
probability of permuting the sequence (red, green, blue) is 1/6.

1
Sets
2
Sequences
3
Factorial
4
Probability