Category
Combinatorics
Counting carefully, and knowing when not to count at all.
Combinatorics is about counting without listing. The hard part is rarely the arithmetic; it is finding the description of the set that makes it countable in the first place.
Expect arrangements and selections, the pigeonhole principle, inclusion–exclusion, recursions, and bijections. A surprising number of these are solved by counting the same thing twice and setting the two answers equal.
Latest problems
137 problems
Average Value Over All Permutations
1632
19
Probability the Median Lies in an Interval
1500
10
Probability of Choosing Consecutive Terms
1443
22
Octagon Obstacle
1582
16
Permuting Mathematch
1343
16
Smallest Set Size Guaranteeing a Repeated Remainder
1193
30
Permutations with a Letter-Position Constraint
1517
13
Counting Isosceles Triangles from Circle Points
1562
25
Browse every Combinatorics problem →