So far, we have looked at problems asking us to put objects in order. There are many problems in which we want to select a few objects from a group of objects, but we do not care about the order. When we are selecting objects and the order does not matter, we are dealing with combinations. A selection of [latex]r[/latex] objects from a set of [latex]n[/latex] objects where the order does not matter can be written as [latex]C\left(n,r\right)[/latex]. Just as with permutations, [latex]\text{C}\left(n,r\right)[/latex] can also be written as [latex]{}_{n}{C}_{r}[/latex]. In this case, the general formula is as follows.

An earlier problem considered choosing 3 of 4 possible paintings to hang on a wall. We found that there were 24 ways to select 3 of the 4 paintings in order. But what if we did not care about the order? We would expect a smaller number because selecting paintings 1, 2, 3 would be the same as selecting paintings 2, 3, 1. To find the number of ways to select 3 of the 4 paintings, disregarding the order of the paintings, divide the number of permutations by the number of ways to order 3 paintings. There are [latex]3!=3\cdot 2\cdot 1=6[/latex] ways to order 3 paintings. There are [latex]\frac{24}{6}[/latex], or 4 ways to select 3 of the 4 paintings. This number makes sense because every time we are selecting 3 paintings, we are not selecting 1 painting. There are 4 paintings we could choose not to select, so there are 4 ways to select 3 of the 4 paintings.