edumacational - fun with binomial theory

[doyle]

I was posting a comment about this on icafreak's journal and I thought "it's maths! Random pointless maths! Who wouldn't love that!"

So anyway, I was talking about my love of odd pairings.

I'd love to have written all the possible pairings, even if it's only for a ficlet, but even just counting the major characters there are *so many*. (If we're talking Buffy, Willow, Xander, Giles, Dawn, Anya, Tara, Oz, Riley, Spike, Angel, Cordelia, Gunn, Wesley, Fred, Illyria, Lorne, Harmony, Doyle, Faith, Lindsey and Lilah - 22 people equals (22*21)/2 pairings. That's 231 pairings, unless my maths is shoddier than I think. And it would mean writing something like Lorne/Dawn or Giles/Lindsey...)

I'm sure I'm missing a major character. Connor! How could I forget my boy! And Andrew! Okay, add them. And Snyder, for swmbo. That gives us 25 characters. The number of possible pairings goes up to 300 (25*24/2). 300! I've got a long way to go before I've done all of them.

If our 25 characters are bored with twosomes then there's a gigantamous 25*24*23/6 = 2300 possibilities for hot threeway action. Okay, might be just a bit impossible to do them all.

The moral of this is: more randomness in our pairings is what we need. To start with, someone should write Cordelia/Dawn/Riley. Or, as icafreak suggested, Anya/Illyria.

Disclaimer: should be taken as an estimate only. I may well have screwed up the maths, in which case the mathematicians on my friendslist will point and laugh.

Comments

[makd.livejournal.com]

Put the calculator down, NOW. Place it in the lowest drawer of the desk, way in the back, underneath some papers, where you'll never find it again.

Walk away from the desk, slowly - very slowly. Now, leave the building, go off to a nice, quiet, place and have a nice cup of hot tea and some cookies.