We put 12 different balls to 4 equal boxes. How many configurations are possible?
If the boxes were distinguishable it would be simply $4^{12}$, but I do not know how to consider the fact that they are distinguishable.
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Sign up to join this communityWhen the balls are indistinguishable, you will have the following formula:
\begin{equation} {n+k-1 \choose n} \end{equation}
The formula counts the number of ways in which n indistinguishable balls can be distributed into k distinguishable boxes. In the following link, you can find a good explanation of the reasoning behind it. Number of ways of distributing balls into boxes