From: Gregg N 

"Rich"  wrote in news:40763dc2{at}w3.nls.net:

>    It's not 2^N.  It's N! (factorial).  N! = 1 * 2 * ... * N.  You can
>    see this if you consider that for N items your choice of the first
>    item has N options, the second N-1, etc until there is only 1 left.
>
> Rich

That would be the number of permutations of n items. The number of
combinations of n things taken r at a time, denoted C(n, r), is

      n!
   ---------
   (n-r)! r!

I'm not sure if this is what Ellen is looking for though.

Gregg

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