How Many Ways Can You Make a Dollar?

There are 293 different ways to make change for a dollar using U.S. coins.

You could make a dollar with 100 pennies.

Or with four quarters.

Or with nine dimes, one nickel, and five pennies.

It’s a bit like money math meets LEGO; lots of little pieces snapping into the same final shape.

This fascinating fact is actually rooted in something called combinatorics, a field of math that explores how many ways things can be arranged.

It’s the same kind of math used to figure out how many ways you can arrange toppings on a pizza or how many different hands you can deal in a game of cards.

Coins may not be as exciting as bills, but they can definitely add up.