Denote by $D(a_1,\dots,a_n)$ the product $\prod_{j>i}(a_j-a_i)$. Assuming that $a_i$ are integers s.t. $a_1\le a_2\le\dots\le a_n$, proove that $D(a_1,...,a_n)/D(1,...,n)$ is the number of Gelfand-Zetlin triangles (that is, triangles consisting of $\frac{n(n+1)}2$ integers, s.t. each number is greater it's lower-left neighbor but not greater than lower-right neighbor) with the base $a_i$.
For example, for n=3 one needs to prove that number of b1, b2, b' s.t. $a_1\le b_1 As one can guess from the name “Gelfand-Zetlin”, this fact is well-known in representation theory (namely, in LHS we count dimension of a $gl_n$-representation by Weyl formula, and in RHS we count elements in Gelfand-Zetlin basis of the same representation). But maybe someone can come with more or less direct proof? (Some kind of bijective proof, maybe.) For simplicity, consider the case $n=3$: D(a_1,a_2,a_3) counts the number of triangles s.t. $a_1\le b_1 (The main problem with this computation is that we're multiplying probabilities for events that are clearly not independent. And although for n=3 it's not hard to transform this heuristic argument into a formal proof, even for n=4 I failed to do such thing.)
Informal probabilistic argument