An ordered arrangement of n different objects. The number of permutations (i.e. the number of different possible ordered arrangements) is n!.
For ordered selection of r objects from a set of n(≥r) different objects, the number of permutations of r from n, i.e. the number of different possible ordered selections, is usually denoted by nPr. In fact,
Special values are nP0=1, nP1=n, nPn=n!. For example, the 6 (=3!) permutations of {A, B, C} are ABC, ACB, BAC, BCA, CAB, CBA, and there are 24 (=4 × 3 × 2) permutations of 3 letters from {A, B, C, D}.
If the n objects are not all different, and there are n1 objects of type 1, n2 objects of type 2,…, nk objects of type k, where n1+n2+⋯+nk=n, then the number of different ordered arrangements is
For unordered selection, see combination.