FRIDAY'S KILLER QUESTION: The Bajoran alphabet has 18 letters...

3 December 2010

1 minute read

FRIDAY'S KILLER QUESTION: The Bajoran alphabet has 18 letters...

Every Friday we'll be posting challenging and cryptic questions for you to answer, provided for us by 7city Learning. Post your answers in the comments box at the bottom of the page. Extreme deference will be accorded to the person who provides the correct answer first. We'll add the official answer to the bottom of this article on Monday afternoon.

The Bajoran alphabet ( (from Star Trek) has 18 letters. All Bajoran words consist of 5 unique letters. The order in which the letters are written does not matter, as it does not alter the meaning of the word. As a matter of fact, any grouping of 5 unique letters would form a word in the Bajoran language.

The Romulan (again, from Star Trek) alphabet has 20 letters. All Romulan words consist of 4 unique letters. As a matter of fact, any arrangement of 4 unique letters is a word in the Romulan language.

How large are the Bajoran and Romulan vocabularies, respectively?

ANSWER:

Bajoran: Combinations of 5 out of 18; 8,568 words.

Romulan: Permutations of 4 out of 20; 116,280 words.

AUTHOR7cityLearning

Insider Comment

Sa
Sarah, Editor, eFinancialCaree
7 December 2010
@XX - Sorry, it's there now.
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XX
XX
7 December 2010
Hey, its gone 4pm, where is it??
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ma
madhurpatel
6 December 2010
Bajoran - 18c5 = 8568
Romulan - 20c4 * 4! = 116280
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el
elliot
5 December 2010
Follow-up to Romulan...schoolboy error, there are 24 (not 16) ways of arranging 4 letter word. Therefore 4,845 x 24 = 116,280.
ew
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el
elliot
5 December 2010
..total letter universe count = n
number of letters in a word = y
BAJORAN
to solve = n! / (y! x (n-y)!)
which is 18! / (5! x 13!) = 8,568
ROMULAN
same method as for Bajoran, except this time letters can be arranged in any ways within the 4 letter word.
first step:
20! / (16! x 4!) = 4,845 (this is the number of 4 letter words where the order of the letters does not matter)
second step:
any four letter word can be arranged in 16 ways.
4,845 x 16 = 77,520
ew
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