# What is the correct number of possibilities for a staff and 8 staffheads to choose from?

Let's say you have a staff and 8 staffheads. You can only put 1 staffhead on each end. But you can also put no staffhead on 1 or both ends. Every staffhead is unique.

How many possible configurations are there? Note that order is not important here. You can just flip the staff 180 degrees.

I tried to solve this in 3 different ways and got 3 different answers, so now I'm really confused.

First I thought it was just 9*8 = 72, because you can choose 9 things for the first end, and only 8 are left to choose from for the second end. But then I realized you can reuse the "nothing" option, so it should be 73.

Then I remembered there is a nCr function. I googled "9 choose 2" and it said 36. This makes me think my first way of doing it included order, which is not what I want. But again, since you can reuse the "nothing" option, the answer would actually be 37.

Then I finally spelled things out using N and A to H.

NN, NA, NB, NC, ... , NH = 9

AB, AC, ... , AH = 8

BC, BD, ... , = 7

... = 6+5+4+3+2 = 20

GH = 1

I summed them all up and got 45.

So now I'm pretty confused. Which one is correct and why? Or are all of them incorrect?

Note: I put tags for combination and permutation because I'm not 100% sure which one really applies to this question.

• Your first attempt ignores that we could flip the staff upside-down and it should count as "the same" staff. Your second attempt and last attempt should have both been correct, however you made a mistake when counting. Notice that $\{AB,AC,\dots, AH\}$ have only seven possibilities, not eight. $H$ is the eighth letter of the alphabet and this batch started counting from $AB$, not $AA$. That would make the total instead $9+7+6+5+\dots+1=37$, the same answer as the second method. – JMoravitz May 25 '18 at 20:34
• @JMoravitz Thanks for the proofreading. I was expecting some answer delving deep into probability theory. Instead it was a simple counting error. I need to be more careful with letters and ...s. – DrZ214 May 25 '18 at 20:41