Stirling numbers of the second kind count the number of ways to partition a set of n elements into k nonempty subsets. They are denoted by or . The sum
is the nth Bell number.
Using falling factorials, we can characterize the Stirling numbers of the second kind by the identity
Read more about this topic: Stirling Number
Famous quotes containing the words stirling, numbers and/or kind:
“Oh, if thy pride did not our joys control,
What world of loving wonders shouldst thou see!
For if I saw thee once transformed in me,
Then in thy bosom I would pour my soul;”
—William Alexander, Earl O Stirling (1580?–1640)
“The land cannot be cleansed of the blood that is shed therein, but by the blood of him that shed it.”
—Bible: Hebrew Numbers 35:33.
“There are acacias, a graceful species amusingly devitalized by sentimentality, this kind drooping its leaves with the grace of a young widow bowed in controllable grief, this one obscuring them with a smooth silver as of placid tears. They please, like the minor French novelists of the eighteenth century, by suggesting a universe in which nothing cuts deep.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)