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In this segment we introduce a
simple but powerful tool, the

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basic counting principle, which
we will be using over

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and over to deal with
counting problems.

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Let me describe the idea through
a simple example.

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You wake up in the morning and
you find that you have in your

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closet 4 shirts, 3 ties,
and 2 jackets.

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In how many different ways can
you get dressed today?

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To answer this question, let
us think of the process of

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getting dressed as consisting of
three steps, three stages.

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You first choose a shirt, let's
say this one, and you

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have 4 choices of shirts.

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But each shirt can be used
together with 1 of the 3

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available ties to make
3 different shirt-tie

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combinations.

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But since we had 4 choices for
the shirt, this means that we

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have 4 times 3, equals 12,
shirt-tie combinations.

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Finally, you choose a jacket.

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Each shirt-tie combination can
go together with either

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jacket, and so the fact that you
have 2 jackets available

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doubles the number of options
that you have, leading to 24

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different options overall.

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So 24 is the answer to
this simple problem.

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And how did the number
24 come about?

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Well, 24 is the same as the
number of options you had in

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the first stage times the number
of options you had in

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the second stage times the
number of options you had in

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the third stage.

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Let us generalize.

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Suppose we want to construct
some kind of object, and we're

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going to construct it through a
sequential process, through

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a sequence of r different
stages.

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In the example that we just
considered, the number of

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stages was equal to 3.

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At each one of the stages, you
have a number of options that

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are available.

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So in our example, at the first
stage we had 4 options,

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at the second stage we had 3
options, and at the last stage

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we had 2 options.

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What is important is that when
you reach stage i, no matter

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what you chose, no matter what
you did at the previous

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stages, the number of options
that you will have available

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at stage i is going to be that
fixed number, n-sub-i.

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So what is the answer?

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How many different objects can
you construct this way?

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Well, just generalizing from
what we did in our specific

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example, the answer is the
product of the number of

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choices or options that
you had at each stage.

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This is the counting
principle.

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It's a very simple idea,
but it is powerful.

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It will allow us
to solve fairly

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complicated counting problems.

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However, before we go into more
complicated problems, let

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us first deal with a few
relatively easy examples.

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In our first example, let us
consider license plates that

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consist of 2 letters followed
by 3 digits.

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The question is, how
many different

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license plates are there?

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We think of the process of
constructing a license plate

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as a sequential process.

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At the first stage we choose a
letter, and we have 26 choices

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for the first letter.

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Then we need to choose the
second letter, and we have 26

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choices for that one.

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Then we choose the
first digit.

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We have 10 choices for it.

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We choose the second digit, for
which we have 10 choices.

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And finally, we choose the last
digit, for which we also

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have 10 choices.

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So if you multiply these
numbers, you can find the

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number of different license
plates that you can make with

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2 letters followed
by 3 digits.

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Now let us change the problem a
little bit and require that

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no letter and no digit can
be used more than once.

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So, let us think of a process
by which we could construct

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license plates of this kind.

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In the first stage, we choose
the first letter that goes to

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the license plate, and
we have 26 choices.

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Now, let us go into a second
stage where we choose the

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second letter.

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Because we used 1 letter in the
first stage, this means

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that there's only 25 available
letters that can be used.

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We only have 25 choices
at the second stage.

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Now, let us start dealing
with the digits.

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We choose the first digit, and
we have 10 choices for it.

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However, when we go and choose
the next digit we will only

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have 9 choices, because
1 of the digits has

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already been used.

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At this point, 2 digits have
been used, which means that at

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the last stage we have only
8 digits to choose from.

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So by multiplying these numbers,
we can find out the

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answer to this question, the
number of license plates if

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repetition is prohibited.

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Let us now consider a
different example.

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Suppose that we start
with a set that

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consists of n elements.

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What we want to do is
to take these n

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elements and order them.

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A terminology that's often used
here is that we want to

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form a permutation of
these n elements.

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One way of visualizing
permutations is to say that

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we're going to take these
elements of the set, which are

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unordered, and we're
going to place them

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in a sequence slots.

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So we create n slots.

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And we want to put each one of
these elements into one of

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these slots.

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How do we go about it?

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We think of putting the
elements into slots,

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one slot at a time.

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We first consider
the first slot.

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We pick one of the elements
and put it there.

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How many choices do we
have at this stage?

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We have n choices, because we
can pick any of the available

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elements and place
it in that slot.

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Next, we pick another
element and put it

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inside the second slot.

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How many choices do we
have at this step?

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Well, we have already used one
of the available elements,

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which means that there's n minus
1 elements to choose

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from at the next stage.

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At this point, we have used
2 of the elements.

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There is n minus 2
that are left.

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We pick one of them and put it
in the third slot, and we have

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n minus 2 choices
at this point.

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We continue this way.

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We keep going on.

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At some point we have placed
n minus 1 of the

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elements into slots.

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There's only one element left,
and that element, necessarily,

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will get into the last slot.

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There are no choices to
be made at this point.

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So the overall number of ways
that we can carry out this

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process, put the elements into
the n slots, by the counting

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principle is going to be the
product of the number of

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choices that we had at each
one of the stages.

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So it's the product of the
numbers n, n minus 1, n minus

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2, all the way down to 1.

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And this product we denote as a
shorthand this way, which we

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read as n factorial.

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n factorial is the product of
all integers from 1 all the

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way up to n.

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And in particular, the number of
permutations of n elements

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is equal to n factorial.

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Let us now consider
another example.

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We start again with a
general set, which

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consists of n elements.

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And we're interested
in constructing a

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subset of that set.

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In how many different
ways can we do that?

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How many different subsets
are there?

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Let us think of a sequential
process through which we can

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choose the subset.

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The sequential process proceeds
by considering each

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one of the elements of our
set, one at a time.

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We first consider the
first element, and

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here we have 2 choices.

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Do we put it inside
the set or not?

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So 2 choices for the
first element.

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Then we consider the
second element.

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Again, we have 2 choices.

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Do we put it in the
subset or not?

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We continue this way until we
consider all the elements.

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There's n of them.

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And the overall number of
choices that we have is the

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product of 2 times 2 times
2, n times, which is 2

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to the power n.

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At this point, we can also do
a sanity check to make sure

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that our answer is correct.

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Let us consider the simple and
special case where n is equal

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to 1, which means we're starting
with this set with 1

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element, and we want to
find the number of

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subsets that it has.

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According to the answer that we
derived, this should have 2

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to the first, that
is 2 subsets.

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Which ones are they?

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One subset of this set is the
set itself and the other

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subset is the empty set.

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So we do have, indeed, 2 subsets
out of that set, which

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agrees with the answer
that we found.

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Notice that when we count
subsets of a given set, we

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count both the set itself, the
whole set, and we also count

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the empty set.

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All of these are subsets
of our set.

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At this point, we can now
pause and you can try to

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answer some simple questions of
the same kind as the ones

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that we just practiced.