Talk:Method of distinguished element
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[edit]I find this page lacks importance (notability if you like) for Wikipedia. In any case "distinguished element" is not a very good description of what unifies the examples given; it seems more about the basic technique to split the set into disjoint parts that lead to a recursion relation for the counting problem, which is like the simplest idea that comes to mind for any form of systematic counting. Whether this involves a distinguished element is immaterial. Of all the 66+ interpretations Stanley gives for Catalan numbers, I bet for most one easily deduces the basic recurrence for those numbers; whether this involves an "element" depends a lot on what interpretation is at hand. For Dyck paths for instance, the partition is made based on the first time the path gets back to its starting point; that hardly qualifies as a "distinguished element". Marc van Leeuwen (talk) 18:50, 1 February 2010 (UTC)