Introduction to Permutations and Combinations

permutations and combinations, the various ways in which objects from a set may be selected, generally without replacement, to form subsets. This selection of subsets is called a permutation when the order of selection is a factor, a combination when order is not a factor. By considering the ratio of the number of desired subsets to the number of all possible subsets for many games of chance in the 17th century, the French mathematicians Blaise Pascal and Pierre de Fermat gave impetus to the development of combinatorics and probability theory.