If you’re anything like me, you have a hard time deciding on just two flavors when you go out for ice cream. There are so many flavors and so many combinations!
It begs the question, how many flavor combinations are there?
Let’s start by picking one flavor and seeing how many other flavors I can pair with it. We’ll start with Reese’s Cup.
I can have:
That’s 17 combinations already!
Now I can pick a different starting flavor and do the same thing. Let’s try Vanilla.
I can have:
But wait… Reese’s Cup and Vanilla is the same as Vanilla and Reese’s Cup right? The order doesn’t really matter to me. So I want to make sure I’m not counting doubles when I’m counting. That means I’ll actually have one less combination this time.
If I do that again, I’ll again have my list of all combinations, but this time I can cross two doubles out.
If this pattern continues, then each time I’ll have one less pair to count. So instead of listing them out every time I can use this pattern to get my answer faster!
17 + 16 + 15 + 14 + 13 + 12 + 11 + 10 + 9 + 8 + 7 + 6 + 5 + 4 + 3 + 2 + 1 = 153 different combinations!
All that math has made me hungry! I think I’ll get White Chocolate Grisbi and Lemon.
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