Suppose you had them all lined up in a column to add: 23578 23587 23758 23785 23857 23875 25378 ... 85732 87235 87253 87325 87352 87523 +87532 ======= There are 5!=120 numbers to be added. One 5th of the numbers in each column are 2's, one-fifth are 3's, and so on to one-fifth are 8's, So since one-fifth of 120 is 24, the sum of each column is 24*(2+3+5+7+8) = 24*(25) = 600 So there are 600 ten-thousands + 600 thousands + 600 hundreds + 600 tens + 600 ones or 6000000 + 600000 + 60000 + 6000 + 600 ======== 6666600 Edwin