# A New Formula for Permutations?

Last time, we saw that combinations are a subset of permutations, and we wondered what the relationship between the two is. Before we get there, though, let’s look at another possible relationship—one we only hinted at last time. And to examine this relationship, we’ll use a tree diagram.

Tree Diagram

This tree diagram shows the number of permutations of the 4 cards J, Q, K, A—the number of ways we can arrange the 4 cards. The topmost branch shows the result JQKA. And you can see all 24 results from our list last time here in the tree diagram.

4
4 × 3
4 × 3 × 2
4 × 3 × 2 × 1
÷ 3!
÷ 2!
÷ 1!
÷ 0!

Here’s where, normally, people would talk about the multiplication 4 × 3 × 2 × 1 and tell you that another way to write that is with an exclamation mark: 4! But that’s skipping over something important.

And that something important is this: Notice that the first column of the tree diagram—the root of the tree—shows 4 items. This is the number of different permutations you can make of just 1 card, chosen from 4 different cards. And the first and second columns combined show the number of permutations you can make of 2 cards, chosen from 4 cards (JQ, JK, JA, etc.).

And so on. You might think that to go from “permutations of 1 card chosen from 4″ to “permutations of 2 cards chosen from 4″ you would multiply by 2. But of course that’s not right (and the tree diagram tells us so). You actually multiply 4 by 4 – 1. And to go from “permutations of 1 card chosen from 4″ to “permutations of 3 cards chosen from 4″ you multiply 4 • (4 – 1) • (4 – 2).

We’re on the verge of being able to describe the relationship, which I’ll put in question form (and mix in some notation to):

What is the relationship between the number of permutations of $$\mathtt{n}$$ things, $$\mathtt{P(n)}$$, and the number of permutations of $$\mathtt{r}$$ things chosen from $$\mathtt{n}$$ things, $$\mathtt{_{n}P_r}$$?

We can see from our example above that $$\mathtt{P(4)=24}$$. That is, the number of permutations of 4 things is 24. But we also noticed these three results: \begin{aligned}_{\mathtt{4}}\mathtt{P}_{\mathtt{1}}&= \mathtt{\,\,4}\cdot \mathtt{1} \\ _{\mathtt{4}}\mathtt{P}_{\mathtt{2}}&= (\mathtt{4}\cdot \mathtt{1})(\mathtt{4}-\mathtt{1}) \\ _{\mathtt{4}}\mathtt{P}_{\mathtt{3}}&= (\mathtt{4}\cdot \mathtt{1})(\mathtt{4}-\mathtt{1})(\mathtt{4}-\mathtt{2})\end{aligned}

A New Formula?

Study the pattern above and see if you can write a rule that will get you the correct result for any $$\mathtt{_{n}P_r}$$. Check your results here (for example, for $$\mathtt{_{16}P_{12}}$$, you can just enter 16P12 and press Enter).

The rule you write, if you get it right, won’t be an algorithm. But it’ll work every time! This is the step we always skip when teaching about permutations! The next step is to think hard about why it works. We’ll get to the “legal” formula for permutations next time.