List all possible outcome combinations for 50 football matches.

[shugar]

An example will be as follows.
List all possible outcomes for 3 matches.
That will be 27 possible outcomes.
I would like results for my request of 50 matches to be displayed as follows.

HHH
HHD
HHA
HDH
HDD
HDA
HAH
HAD
HAA
DHH
DHD
DHA
DDH
DDD
DDA
DAH
DAD
DAA
AHH
AHD
AHA
ADH
ADD
ADA
AAH
AAD
AAA

Where:
H=HOME
D=DRAW
A=AWAY

Is there a way i can have the possible outcomes listed as above for the outcomes of 50 football matches?
Please indulge my *newbie-ness* , i have to confess i am not conversant with Excel but would really like to learn as much as i can from you all.

Thank you for this opportunity.

NB: I do know that the outcomes will be hundreds of millions if not billions. lol.

[Melvinrobb]

there are this many options: 8881784197001250000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

[tigeravatar]

shugar,

What you're asking for isn't feasible. To get the # of possible outcomes, it is 3 to the power of X where X = the number of matches.

# of Matches	# of Possible Outcomes
1	3
2	9
3	27
4	81
.	.
50	717,897,987,691,852,588,770,249

To clarify, that number is this:
717 Sextillion, 897 Quintillion, 987 Quadrillion, 691 Trillion, 852 Billion, 588 Million, 770 Thousand, 249

[tigeravatar]

I am curious to know how you guys got your respective figures. The number of possible outcomes is a very straightforward calculation: 3 to the power of X where X = the number of matches.

@Melvinrobb, how did you get this number?

8881784197001250000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

@shugar, how did you get this number?

3.54860518e+11

[shugar]

Tigeravatar
I used a permutation and combination calculation on a website called mathsisfun.com
This are the entries i inputed.

Types to choose from= 50
Number chosen= 13
Is order important= no
Is repetition allowed=no

And it gave me the figure i posted.
The reason i chose 13 is because i would like to select random sets of 13 outcomes from many of the billions of outcomes.

[shugar]

Thank you for the response.
I guess i should leave this to rest then. I never knew it would be this much of a headache.
3.54860518e+11
thats the total figure of outcomes.
mind boggling if u ask me.

[tigeravatar]

To put that more into perspective:
Excel 2007 and higher has 16,384 columns and 1,048,576 rows for a total of 17,179,869,184 cells per worksheet.
If a single combination took up a single cell and we used every cell in a worksheet, you would still need 41,787,162,638,027 worksheets. Yes, that's more than 41.75 Trillion sheets, each of which is loaded with over 17 billion combinations.

[shugar]

Below is a code and reply i got from a kind forumite on another group.
Do you think it can do what it says and most importantly, how do i implement it on the excel software?


I think a listing of 3^50 items, which is likely beyond the capacity of your computer.

Here's a VBA code you can run to check that out.

See the Const v& = 3 at the top of the code. Running this code as it stands will produce the 3x3 output that you list.

You can change that line to Const v& = 5, then to Const v& =10 etc. to see how rapidly in magnitude and time taken your problem entails.
VB:
Sub stuff()

Const v& = 3

Dim z, y() As String, q()
Dim a&, b&, c&, d&, p&, MaxRow&
MaxRow = 65536
z = Array("H", "D", "A")
u = UBound(z) + 1
Redim y(1 To u ^ v, 1 To v)

For a = 1 To v
For b = 1 To u ^ v Step u ^ a
For c = b To b + u ^ (a - 1) - 1
For d = 1 To u
y(c + u ^ (a - 1) * (d - 1), v - a + 1) = z(d - 1)
Next d, c, b, a

For a = 1 To u ^ v Step MaxRow
Redim q(1 To MaxRow, 1 To 1)
p = p + 1
For b = 1 To MaxRow
If a + b > u ^ v + 1 Then Exit For
q(b, 1) = y(a + b - 1, 1)
For c = 2 To v
q(b, 1) = q(b, 1) & y(a + b - 1, c)
Next c
Next b

Cells(p).Resize(MaxRow) = q
Next a

End Sub