Not an exercise, more of a question.

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The discussion focuses on determining the number of unique ways to express a number \( n \) as the sum of \( u \) addends, where order matters and all addends are positive integers. Specifically, the example given is finding the unique combinations to sum to 6 using 4 addends. The user seeks a more efficient formula than manually permuting combinations, referencing Wikipedia for additional context on the topic.

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IHateFactorial
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If I have a number n and I want to know all the unique ways in which I can use u addends to get that number... How do I do it?

For example: If the number is 6 and I want to see how many unique ways I can add up to it (order matters: $$1 + 1 + 2 + 2\ne 2 + 2 + 1 + 1$$) by using 4 addends, what's the formula? (This is, in fact, considering that all the addends are greater than 0 and whole numbers.)

I can do it by looking for each unique way to add up to n using u addends and then factoring in the number of ways each can be permutated, including repeated numbers, but that seems too tedious.
 
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