The ubiquity of Littlewood-Richardson coefficients. Given three partitions $\lambda, \mu, \nu$ each with at most $n$ parts, there is a combinatorial definition for a number $c^\nu_{\lambda, \mu}$ which is nonzero if and only if any of the following statements are true:
- There exist Hermitian matrices $A, B, C$ whose eigenvalues are $\lambda, \mu, \nu$, respectively and $A + B = C$ (one can also replace Hermitian by real symmetric)
- The irreducible representation of ${\bf GL}_n({\bf C})$ with highest weight $\nu$ is a subrepresentation of the tensor product of those irreducible representations with highest weights $\lambda$ and $\mu$.
- Indexing the Schubert cells of the Grassmannian ${\bf Gr}(d,{\bf C}^m)$ (where $d \ge n$ and $m-d$ is at least as big as any part of $\lambda, \mu, \nu$) by $\sigma_\lambda$ appropriately, the cycle $\sigma_\nu$ appears in the intersection product $\sigma_\lambda \sigma_\mu$.
- There exists finite Abelian $p$-groups $A,B,C$ and a short exact sequence $0 \to A \to B \to C \to 0$ such that $B \cong \bigoplus_i {\bf Z}/p^{\nu_i}$, $A\cong \bigoplus_i {\bf Z}/p^{\lambda_i}$, and $C\cong \bigoplus_i {\bf Z}/p^{\mu_i}$.
And probably many more things.