Thanks jfan17,
I would do it the same way but I rarely bother with any but the most basic formulas
I just think of it like this.
There are 50 votes. (the stars)
We need to divide them into 4 groups which will need 3 bars .
The first candidate will get all the votes in front of the first bar.
The second candidate gets all the votes between the 1'st and the 2'nd bar.
The third candidate gets all the votes between the 2'st and the 3'nd bar.
The fourth candidate gets all the votes after the 3rd bar.
So there are 53 things. 50 votes and 3 bars.
All we need to do ist to work out how many different combinations are possible for where to put the divider bars
So it will be 53C3 ( which is exactly the same as 53C50 )