BOB on Combinatorics

During the first class, I was quite excited because I was pretty anxious to learn how to use simple equations and numbers to figure out the chances of a certain subject, such as how many ways can 3 people sit in 4 ways. I thought that was pretty cool. At first it was really simple with the factorials, I got my head around that quite quick, my head lassoed those factorial no problem. Then we fondled with permutations and permutations that include 0's. Those were slightly more challenging but nevertheless, I eventually came to understand those as well.

Now circular permutations were just plain frightening. Then Mr. K explained it, and I was still confused which made me even more scared. Then he gave us an equation: (n-1)!, that was easy enough to memorize, and I wasn't so worried anymore. Same with bracelets, the only difference being that you can flip them, so just divide the equations by 2: (n-1)!/2.

Pascal's triangle, seemed to be difficult at first, but I started to notice simple little patterns, then learn more challenging patterns, like the Fibonacci sequence, and the hockey stick sequence, that I probably would have never discovered. Phi was pretty cool, learned a bit of photography that class. It was interesting to know that "Phi" was attractive, and how the ancient Greek's knew about Phi and how they built an entire temple with objects that were related to Phi. The binomial theorem was challenging and I don't understand everything about it, but I should do just fine.

The last thing were the Poker hands. That class, I really felt like playing poker, but then my head started to spin, with all these different equations put together like a puzzle with so many rules put into play, I didn't really get it. I hope I won't flunk this test, like I flunk in actual poker. Good Luck on the test everyone.

-Francis