Commutation_Relations_Normal_Ordering_and_Stirling_Numbers-9781466579897.pdf

p. 26

Stirling Numbers

Incense ritual

"The first known application of set partitions arose in the context of tea ceremonies and incense games in Japanese upper-class society around 1500. Guests at a Kado ceremony would be smelling cups with burned incense with the goal to either identify the incense or to identify which cups contained identical incense. "