[Math] In how many ways can one divide 10 people into 4 unequally sized groups

combinatorics

Many questions on this site involve counting the number of ways one can divide a set of n people into equally-sized groups, but how would one do so for unequally-sized groups?

The answers for this question don't provide an explanation of how to do this.

More specifically, what are the number of ways I can divide a set of 10 people in the following groups:

  • Two groups will contain 3 people.
  • One group will contain 2 people.
  • One group will contain 1 person.

For this specific question, I was thinking

$$
\frac{\dbinom{10}{3} \dbinom{7}{3} \dbinom{4}{2} \dbinom{2}{1}}{4!}
$$

The numerator represents the grouping and the denominator represents the fact that the order of the grouping does not matter.

However, the answers to the referenced question show that this is incorrect.

Best Answer

Because the groups of $2$ and $1$ are distinct sizes, you don't have to consider reordering those groups. The denominator should be $2!=2$ because there are $2$ ways to order the two groups of three. The numerator is correct.