Dice Throw

Given n dice each with m faces, numbered from 1 to m, find the number of ways to get sum X. X is the summation of values on each face when all the dice are thrown.

The Naive approach is to find all the possible combinations of values from n dice and keep on counting the results that sum to X.

This problem can be efficiently solved using Dynamic Programming (DP).

Let the function to find X from n dice is: Sum(m, n, X)
The function can be represented as:
Sum(m, n, X) = Finding Sum (X - 1) from (n - 1) dice plus 1 from nth dice
               + Finding Sum (X - 2) from (n - 1) dice plus 2 from nth dice
               + Finding Sum (X - 3) from (n - 1) dice plus 3 from nth dice
                  ...................................................
                  ...................................................
                  ...................................................
              + Finding Sum (X - m) from (n - 1) dice plus m from nth dice

So we can recursively write Sum(m, n, x) as following
Sum(m, n, X) = Sum(m, n - 1, X - 1) + 
               Sum(m, n - 1, X - 2) +
               .................... + 
               Sum(m, n - 1, X - m)

Why DP approach? The above problem exhibits overlapping subproblems. See the below diagram.

Let there be 3 dice, each with 6 faces and we need to find the number of ways to get sum 8:

Please take a closer look at the above recursion.

The sub-problems in RED are solved first time and sub-problems in BLUE are solved again (exhibit overlapping sub-problems). Hence, storing the results of the solved sub-problems saves time.