EJMT Abstract

Combinatorics is a branch of mathematics strongly related to computer science, with a very prominent role in school curricula. In order to develop the “combinatorial thinking” of students, it is important to provide them with detailed demonstrations of fundamental theorems and results in this area, so that they can get a “feel” of combinatorics. With this in mind, we provide an algorithmic solution for a given combinatorial problem, the avoiding factors problem, with a detailed demonstration, at the level of an undergraduate student. A website has been published with the aim of letting students experiment with an implementation of our solution, enabling them to verify their own work.