Question

There are 16 people interested in helping with a committee. In how many ways could a committee be chosen, assuming the committee contains at
least one person.
review the power set
There are 2^16 - 1 non-empty subsets of a set of 16 elements
I don't understand it. I've done similar questions before but this one is different. Do you mind explaining it a bit more? Also what power set?
ever hear of google? search for "power set"
Suppose you have 3 elements. You can make all the non-empty subsets as follows:
{1}, {2}, {3}, {1,2}, {1,3}, {2,3}, {1,2,3}
There are 2^3 - 1 = 7 such subsets

The nth row of Pascal's Triangle tells how many subsets of k elements there, with k going from 0 to n. The numbers on the nth row add up to 2^n.

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