Combination Functions – Combin()

Combin and Combina Functions

The Excel Combin and CombinA functions both calculate a number of combinations of a set of objects.
However, the two functions differ in that the Combin function does not count repetitions whereas the CombinA function does count repetitions.
For example, in a set of 3 objects, a, b, c, how many combinations of 2 objects are there?
The Combin function returns the result 3 (combinations: ab, ac, bc);
The Combina function returns the result 6 (combinations: aa, ab, ac, bb, bc, cc).

Combin() Function

The Excel Combin function returns the number of combinations (in any order) of a given number of items. To use COMBIN, specify the total number of items and "number chosen" which represents the number of items in each combination.


Syntax

The syntax for the COMBIN function in Microsoft Excel is:

=COMBIN( number, chosen )

Parameters or Arguments

number

The number of items.

chosen

The number of items in a combination.

Excel Combin Function Examples

For any 6 objects (e.g. a, b, c, d, e, f), there are 15 different combinations of 2 objects. These are:

ab
ac
ad
ae
af
bc
bd
be
bf
cd
ce
cf
de
df
ef

This is calculated using the Excel Combin function in cell A2 of the following spreadsheet.
The spreadsheet also shows the Combin function used to calculate the number of combinations for other numbers of objects taken from a set of 6.

Formulas:


A
1
=COMBIN( 6, 1 )
2
=COMBIN( 6, 2 )
3
=COMBIN( 6, 3 )
4
=COMBIN( 6, 4 )
5
=COMBIN( 6, 5 )
6
=COMBIN( 6, 6 )

Results:


A
1
6
2
15
3
20
4
15
5
6
6
1

Notes

   A combination is any a group of items in any order. If order is significant, use the PERMUT function.
   Arguments that contain decimal values are truncated to integers.
   COMBIN returns a #VALUE! error value if either argument is not numeric.
   If number is less than number chosen, COMBIN returns #NUM!

References

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