# Permutation

In mathematics, permutation is the act of arranging the members of a set into a sequence or order, or, if the set is already ordered, rearranging (reordering) its elements—a process called permuting. Permutations differ from combinations, which are selections of some members of a set regardless of order. For example, written as tuples, there are six permutations of the set {1,2,3}, namely: (1,2,3), (1,3,2), (2,1,3), (2,3,1), (3,1,2), and (3,2,1). These are all the possible orderings of this three-element set. Anagrams of words whose letters are different are also permutations: the letters are already ordered in the original word, and the anagram is a reordering of the letters. The study of permutations of finite sets is an important topic in the fields of combinatorics and group theory. Permutations are studied in almost every branch of mathematics, and in many other fields of science. In computer science, they are used for analyzing sorting algorithms; in quantum physics, for describing states of particles, and in biology, for describing RNA sequences. The number of permutations of n distinct objects is n factorial, usually written as n!, which means the product of all positive integers less than or equal to n. In algebra, and particularly in group theory, a permutation of a set S is defined as a bijection from S to itself. That is, it is a function from S to S for which every element occurs exactly once as an image value. This is related to the rearrangement of the elements of S in which each element s is replaced by the corresponding f(s). For example, the permutation (3,1,2) mentioned above is described by the function α {\displaystyle \alpha } defined as: α ( 1 ) = 3 , α ( 2 ) = 1 , α ( 3 ) = 2 {\displaystyle \alpha (1)=3,\quad \alpha (2)=1,\quad \alpha (3)=2} . The collection of such permutations form a group called the symmetric group of S. The key to this group's structure is the fact that the composition of two permutations (performing two given rearrangements in succession) results in another rearrangement. Permutations may act on structured objects by rearranging their components, or by certain replacements (substitutions) of symbols. Frequently the set used is S = N n = { 1 , 2 , … , n } {\displaystyle S=\mathbb {N} _{n}=\{1,2,\ldots ,n\}} , but there is no restriction on the set. In elementary combinatorics, the k-permutations, or partial permutations, are the ordered arrangements of k distinct elements selected from a set. When k is equal to the size of the set, these are the permutations of the set.

## Words

This table shows the example usage of word lists for keywords extraction from the text above.

WordWord FrequencyNumber of ArticlesRelevance
permutations123200.277
permutation53240.115
set111100450.102
s10854900.099
n101012990.095