Number of combinations

DarkSun

New member
Joined
Jan 3, 2009
Messages
29
Hey,
I need some help with the following issue...

Say I have N blocks of decreasing size (each block smaller than the previous),
and each block can either be put on another block of a bigger size, or alone.
How many combinations can I have? (without duplicates)

I can count that for 3 blocks I have 5:
[ 3 2 1 ]
[ 3 2 ][ 1 ]
[ 3 1 ][ 2 ]
[ 3 ][ 2 1 ]
[ 3 ][ 2 ][ 1 ]
But how do I calculate this for N?

Thanks!
 
Bell_numbers count the number of partitions of a finite set. Hence, they also count the number of equivalence relations of the set.
 
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