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URGENT: Permutations and Combinations, Mathematics P6!

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Please help me out with this topic. I can never figure out when to use the C formula or the P formula. Any help would be appreciated! :oops:
 
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mate this is one topic with the easiest of concepts to get and one of the most difficult of questions to solve.
you can ask anybody the difference between the two and the main gist of both the definitions would be that in permutations order is important and in combination order is immaterial.
combination comes into action mostly when you have to choose a team or something from some group of people. so for example if A, B and C are three individuals and they are required to be a part of a team with 2 pupils than the formula would be 3C2 because order is not important here ( A and B or B or A = doesn't matter, the team would still be the same ).
and if the same individuals are to form a line of 2 then you would apply 3P2 because now A standing behind B is different from B standing behind A. ORDER is important here.
Practice A LOT of questions on this topic because that is the only way you can get command on it.
I hope you get it.
Regards.
Mahad.
 

PlanetMaster

XPRS Administrator
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In English we use the word "combination" loosely, without thinking if the order of things is important. In other words:

> "My fruit salad is a combination of apples, grapes and bananas".
> We don't care what order the fruits are in, they could also be "bananas, grapes and apples"
> or "grapes, apples and bananas", its the same fruit salad.

> "The combination to the safe was 472".
> Now we do care about the order. "724" would not work, nor would "247". It has to be exactly 4-7-2.

So, in Mathematics we use more precise language:
>If the order doesn't matter, it is a Combination.
>If the order does matter it is a Permutation.
 
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Hey thanks alot Mahad, PlanetMaster and Zahra for the quick and helpful replies!
 
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