Introduction

Bob, Sally, and Pete are standing in line for the movies. They can't decide who should be first, who should be second, and who should be third. How many different combinations are there?

If you click the arrows under the picture, you can scroll through and see there are 6 combinations for the three people.

Each of these arrangements of Bob, Sally, and Pete is called a PERMUTATION. While we can easily scroll through the images, or simply list the different permutations for this example, we can develop a mathematic formula to use for any number of people, or any other set.