 Hook length

The hook length of cell $(i,j)$ in the Young diagram of a partition of an integer $\lambda$ is the number of cells in its Young-diagram hook:Here ${\lambda }^{\prime }$ is the conjugate partition. There is one hook length for every cell, so the multiset of hook lengths has cardinality $|\lambda |$.

For $\lambda =(3,2)$ and ${\lambda }^{\prime }=(2,2,1)$, compute $h_{1,1}=(3-1)+(2-1)+1=4$ and $h_{1,2}=(3-2)+(2-1)+1=3$. Continuing cell by cell gives the hook graph of a partitionor the row array $[[4,3,1],[2,1]]$. Its hook product is $4\cdot 3\cdot 1\cdot 2\cdot 1=24$. A cell has hook length one exactly when it is a Removable node of a Young diagram: it has no cell to its right or below. Here these are $(1,3)$ and $(2,2)$. Transposing the Young diagram gives the array $[[4,2],[3,1],[1]]$ with the same hook product; this explains geometrically why conjugate shapes have equal counts in the hook-length formula.