Combinations With Repetiton
Author: Aryan Maftooh
  
15/12/2025

I assume you know how to count the nunmber of possible subsets of set with cardinality n.

\[ \lvert B \rvert = \binom{n}{k} \]

B is the set containig subsets of A all with cardinality k.

One question arises, how to count the possible combinations which allow repetitions in their arrangment? For example we have elements H and T and we want to count the number arrangement we can put these in three slots. we can blindly say that the count would be $2^3$, but this would be worng since the problem is not concerned with order.

This table shows the list of combinations of elements HT with repetition

TTH **|*
TTT ***|
THH *|**
HHH |***

To solve this problem, we use a weird looking seperator | and the elements on its left represent the Tails and astricks on its right represnt Heads. We can say all the spots where seperator can seat is in the set A = {s1, s2, s3, s4} and saying this we have four spots to put only one seprator which means $\binom{4}{1}$ possible ways.

The general fomula is:

\[ \binom{r+n-1}{n-1} = \binom{r+n-1}{r} \]

r is number of slots, n number of distinct objects and n-1 number of sepreators.