Finding all instances

Hi, I have a little problem I am trying to solve but right now I have no idea where to begin. I am preying that someone out there might be able to help me. In my MySQL database I have a group of figures, one for each record. Through PHP I have concluded at a 'magical' number which I will need to compare against. What I need to do is try to find all instances or combinations of figures from the database which fit inside this magical figure, but how I do this I am not sure. I'm thinking I need to somehow read the figures into an array somehow but I have not had enough experience with php to know how to even do this effectively. I have read up on the issue but it all seems double dutch, and I don't know what I need to do from this point anyway. For example: Magic Number: 7 Numbers in database: 12, 6, 2, 8, 5, 3, 1 Combinations returned: 1, 3, 5, 2, 6, 5&2, 3&2, 3&2&1, 5&1, 6&1, 2&1, 3&1 Can anyone please help? Thanks, Michael.