The History of Mathematics: A Brief Course

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  1. COMBINATORICS 21!)


Albrecht Diirer's Melencolia, containing a magic square show-
ing the date of composition as 1514. © Corbis Images (No.
BE005826).

the number of permutations of ç objects. There arc many very curious aspects
of this work. Although written mostly in Latin, it is rather polyglot. Leibniz
occasionally breaks into Greek or German, and the tables are labeled with Hebrew
letters. For permutations Leibniz used the word Humerus to denote the size of
the set from which objects are chosen, and exponent (literally, placing out) for the

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