Wednesday, April 15, 2015

432: Stuffing Bags

Sam Shah wrote:
Matt Enlow (math teacher in MA) posted a fascinating problem online today, one he thinks of when storing all those plastic bags from the grocery store. You shove them so they all lie in a single bag, and throw that bag under the sink. Here’s the question: how many different ways can you store these bags?
For 1 bag, there is only 1 way.
For 2 bags, there is still only 1 way.
For 3 bags, there are 2 ways.
Here is a picture for clarification:




Can you figure out how many ways for 6 bags? 13 bags?

source.

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