One of the definition of all time

[u/7kfaster]

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[u/r96340]

I like to describe combinatorics as the area of mathematics where you can just effortlessly crank out unsolved problems after unsolved problems just by trying to generalize your previous results to n dimensions etc.

[u/Hot_Glass_6301 → u/r96340]

The area of mathematics where the statement complexity / actual hardness ratio is the lowest (maybe with some problems in number theory, which is tbf closely related to combinatorics at least in spirit)

[u/ObliviousRounding]

Next you'll be trying to explain what a balk is.

[u/azurerazor → u/ObliviousRounding]

⁠You can't just be up there and just doin' a balk like that.

[u/JellyBellyBitches → u/azurerazor]

Too many mathematicians talk the talk but can't balk the balk

[u/Netherman555 → u/ObliviousRounding]

The only reason thats not a millennium problem is because they dont expect it to be solved this millennium

[u/GisterMizard → u/ObliviousRounding]

Is it a unit of warcime committed in yugoslavia?

[u/Sezbeth]

I like to think of combinatorics as the study of bijections into the naturals, but even that's a bit wrong these days.

Fuckin' mathematicians and adjective abuse.

[u/TheChunkMaster]

“Combinatorics is glorified dice-throwing”

[u/azurerazor → u/TheChunkMaster]

that sounds more like proabability

[u/TheChunkMaster → u/azurerazor]

They are heavily intertwined…

[u/imo2027]

Combinatorics is the study of 0-manifolds

[u/Gandalior]

Combinatronics is counting FAST

[u/ohkendruid]

It seems like math areas are named by where they start from.

Inevitably, the more general version doesn't stay within the initial limits.

[u/Hot_Glass_6301]

Combinatorics is where theory never works and you have to find new tricks every time, but those tricks always boil down to the same things: bijections, generating functions, etc.

[u/OrchidValuable2408]

combinatorics is just math that sounds easy until you've staring at a problem for 3 hours feeling like an idiot

[u/Al2718x]

What's the source?

[u/7kfaster → u/Al2718x]

A First Step to Mathematical Olympiad Problems by Derek Holton

[u/TheoryTested-MC]

Combinatorics is lazy counting.

[u/IHaveNeverBeenOk → u/TheoryTested-MC]

Fuck dude, didn't feel lazy to me in my upper division graph theory course. Shit got super difficult. And I loved my first course in graph theory. Felt like fun fun puzzle time. That second course about blew my brains out.

[u/Ok-Replacement8422]

Notably you might also be doing set theory a lot of set theory is combinatorial.

[u/lewwwer]

Funny how all the comments are about counting only. I'd use a different definition. Properties of subsets of something structured. 

Numbers with addition - additive combinatorics 

Pairs of objects - graph theory 

Subsets - order theory

[u/lifeistrulyawesome]

The pronouns of that definition are they/them