Math Help

What is the function/equation for finding how many different permutations of a set are available?

What I mean is, if I have a set of 78 things, how can I easily find how many different ways they can be combined?

Right now all I have is the brute force x=n(o). Meaning that the number of permutations is equal to the number of things in the set times the previous number of permutations. So if there are three things in the set, the number of combinations of those things is equal to three times two. Two being the number of combinations available to a set consisting of two distinct things. And we continue, in that manner. As I said: Brute Force.

So, I'm pretty sure I know there has to be an easier way, but my math, she is not strong.

Help?

Why I needed Math Help:

Just to follow up, I thought I'd let you know that the possible combinations of 78 tarot cards in a traditional 10 card spread is somewhere in the Hundreds of Quadrillions.

I love that.

Good night.

Talking about myself:

I was tagged. You get no explanation.

1) I've met Pat Morita

2) I've had a disturbingly accute grasp of human phsyiology and how to make it work or not work, since I was Very Young.

3) My father developed cooling systems for plasma canons.

4) I've taken Tae Kwon Do.

5) I can identify people I know by their posture, gait, and the sound of their footsteps.

6) I am very bad at math.

7) I used to be so good at math that Johns Hopkins wanted me to attend their summer programs.

8) I forget what eight was for.

9) I went to elementary school with famous people.

10) My paternal grandfather lost an eye building one of the most well-known bridge-tunnels in the DC area.

11) When I was little, my father once told me that the very long prominent scar on his leg was obtained from an encounter with a Land Shark.

12) I built part of my high school.

13) I have taught both 6/7th graders and college students how to think more effectively.

14) I practice magic.

15) I hate the use of the spelling "magick," even though I feel compelled to, in some way distinguish the things I love from stage or up-close illusions.

16) When i was four, I fell down the three interior steps of my montessori school, onto my face, deadening a baby tooth. I had to have a root canal. To this day, that tooth still feels weird, to me, and i worry about it.

17) I know a lot of lawyers, including my mother, who is also a minister.

18) I would like to learn to hunt game in the woods, with a knife, and nothing else.

19) I think that it would be great to get to learn all of the things the military and CIA have to offer, if only I didn't then have to do that whole "Putting Them To Use For Someone Else," thing.

20) I hate listing things about myself. I can never think of things that sound interesting and revealing Enough, without the potential to creep people out, or outright Frighten them.

There. I'm done. I'm not tagging anyone. Do it if you want, but I only did it because someone asked.

Honestly, I want to know things about you. So if you don't want to do this, just message me a secret, or screen a reply, here.

It's bed time.

"Injustice anywhere..."

This is just one breakdown among many detailing why I will not be paying money to see the Avatar: The Last Airbender movie.

http://derekkirkkim.blogspot.com/2009/01/new-day-in-politics-same-old-racist.html

I hope you won't, either.

Working through some issues

So, first of all, the available permutations of the traditional Celtic Cross are something more like 4.5 Quintillion, than the previously stated "hundreds of quadrillions." Just a note.

Tom Waits - [Singapore (Live)]--- Secondly, I'vec been thinking, a lot, about the things I used to be able to do, without much consideration, and I'm wondering what's changed.

I used to be able to gather a group of any 6 people together, and make them Talk to each other. To communicate and actually get shit out in the open, rather than letting it fester and turn nasty. This was, for a while, ointegral to keeping at least one group of my friends together as friends. We called them Porch Meetings. We'd sit around, smoke, talk, and tell each other anything we needed to get off our chests, good or bad, weird or indifferent. Whatever. The setting and nature of my life, at current, is such that I don't think this could happen, again, or anything much like it, and that kind of bothers the shit out of me, because I think... Well I think a lot of us need it.

I think about the need for a clean slate, or at least an empty mind, often. Of turning everyone into everyone else's screaming tree, unburdening everything to the people who supposedly mean something, in your life. Everything. No judgments, no recriminations, just openness, mutual vulnerability, expressions of trust. (Nine Inch Nails - [The Great Destroyer]). Or just Expressions.

I don't know that these Porch Meetings were a good thing, though, and I don't know how many people who attended them still read this space, so it's kind of hard to gauge their longer-term success. I say this because I don't think that any of the people who attended those meetings still talk to each other on a regular basis, or at all.

I worry, more often than I care to admit, about the number of lives I've "ruined." The people whose lives have turned out differently than they intended, specifically because of their knowing me. Differently and, in their eyes, for the worse. (Tom Waits - [Innocent When You Dream (Live)]). I worry that they hold grudges, have concocted long-term plans and schemes, designed to destroy my life at some crucial moment. I am, sometimes, kind of paranoid. Realistically, academically, I know that these people don't think about me, much, if at all. They have moved on, built new lives, emerged changed, as we all do.

But what if they haven't? It's a very unique kind of narcissism, to think that anyone would care that much about you, for that long. But it's a kind of which I am apparently capable.

Often, I find myself wondering at predilections, sexual, social, atypical choices and preferences, and I try to trace them to some source, some Event that made That Mode of interaction seem one of the best. Sometimes I fail, though. I find no point or purpose, no Ur-Moment, where a preference was generated and coalesced.

Imogen Heap - [The Moment I Said It]--- I think about trust issues, about a deep need for people to Trust Me, even as I withhold full and complete trust, from them. About how rare it is for me to give something of myself to someone, that I haven't already given to someone else. I only spread around the pieces of myself that are already on the board. That way, no matter who you are, you only have the same damning information that at least three other people already have. I've said, before, the only way to know anything new about me is to already know pretty much everything about me. Because then you're just watching it unfold, like the rest of us.

And that? That I don't mind, for some reason. You being there, as things happen? I'm pretty cools with that. Because then I know where you are. Then I can watch what you're doing. Then I don't have to Trust you, because I can figure you, as we go. I can trust you to be you.

It's a whole big thing.

Anyway. Hello, LiveJournal Land. I hadn't written anything of real substance, in a while, and I wanted to say hello. These are just the things that have been floating around my head, the past few days and weeks.

Gorillaz - [Double Bass]--- Lot of work to do today. Cleaning and writing. I'll talk to you soon.