Combinatorics: the art of counting
featuring Dr. Marion Campisi

On May 4th, Dr. Marion Campisi led the Saturday Morning Math Group in discussion and problem-solving session on the art of counting. We started out with simpler counting problems, such as how many ways there are to rearrange the letters A,B, and C, and discussed the rule of multiplication and the rule of addition for counting. Then, we used the ideas we'd practiced in simpler problems to tackle more complicated problems, where it would be too hard to write out all the objects to be counted, such as how many ways there are to rearrange the letters in the word MATHEMATICS, how many ways there are to traverse a certain grid, or how many ways there are to select an ice cream cone with a certain number of scoops and a certain number of available flavors. Lastly, we explored the pigeonhole principle, and learned why in the city of London, there are at least two people with the same number of hairs on their heads.

Printable version of the flyer

Videos from the talk: Dr. Marion Campisi, May 4, 2013

Here are some pictures from the talk. Right click and select 'view image' to see it larger.