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Hook Length Formula


The hook length formula gives the number of standard Young tableaux associated with a given Ferrers diagram with n boxes. In each box, write its hook length. The number of standard Young tableaux is then n! divided by the product of all hook lengths.

More generally, the number of linear extensions of a d-complete poset P is |P|!/product_(p in P)h_P(p) for its recursively defined hook lengths. This includes rooted trees and standard shifted Young tableaux as well as ordinary standard Young tableaux. Nguyen et al. (2026, pp. 7-8) give a purely combinatorial proof of the multivariate generalization using an extension of the Robinson-Schensted-Knuth correspondence.


See also

Ferrers Diagram, Hook Length, Linear Extension, Robinson-Schensted-Knuth Correspondence, Young Tableau

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References

Jones, V. "Hecke Algebra Representations of Braid Groups and Link Polynomials." Ann. Math. 126, 335-388, 1987.Nguyen, S.; Vulakh, J.; and Woodruff, D. "A Generalization of RSK to d-Complete Posets." Elec. J. Combin. 33, P4.1, 2026. https://doi.org/10.37236/15257.Numberphile. "Shapes and Hook Numbers." Jan. 8, 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgZhrEs4tuk.Skiena, S. Implementing Discrete Mathematics: Combinatorics and Graph Theory with Mathematica. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1990.

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Hook Length Formula

Cite this as:

Weisstein, Eric W. "Hook Length Formula." From MathWorld--A Wolfram Resource. https://mathworld.wolfram.com/HookLengthFormula.html

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