Analyzing the time complexity of Coin changing - dynamic-programming

Question

We're doing the classic problem of determining the number of ways that we can make change that amounts to Z given a set of coins.
For example, Amount=5 and Coins={1, 2, 3}. One way we can make 5 is {2, 3}.
The naive recursive solution has a time complexity of factorial time.
f(n) = n * f(n-1) = n!
My professor argued that it actually has a time complexity of O(2^n), because we only choose to use a coin or not. That intuitively makes sense. However how come my recurence doesn't work out to be O(2^n)?
EDIT:
My recurrence is as follows:
f(5, {1, 2, 3})
/ \ .....
f(4, {2, 3}) f(3, {1, 3}) .....
Notice how the branching factor decreases by 1 at every step.
Formally.
T(n) = n*F(n-1) = n!

Answer 1

The recurrence doesn't work out to what you expect it to work out to because it doesn't reflect the number of operations made by the algorithm.
If the algorithm decides for each coin whether to output it or not, then you can model its time complexity with the recurrence T(n) = 2*T(n-1) + O(1) with T(1)=O(1); the intuition is that for each coin you have two options---output the coin or not; this obviously solves to T(n)=O(2^n).

Answer 2

I too was trying to analyze the time complexity for the brute force which performs depth first search:
def countCombinations(coins, n, amount, k=0):
if amount == 0:
return 1
res = 0
for i in range(k, n):
if coins[k] <= amount:
remaining_amount = amount - coins[i] # considering this coin, try for remaining sum
# in next round include this coin too
res += countCombinations(coins, n, remaining_amount, i)
return res
but we can see that the coins which are used in one round is used again in the next round, so at least for 1st coin we have n items at each stage which is equivalent to permutation with repetition n^r for n items available to arrange into r positions at each stage.
ex: [1, 1, 1, 1]; sum = 4
This will generate a recursive tree where for first path we literally have solutions at each diverged subpath until we have the sum=0. so the time complexity is O(sum^n) ie for each stage in the path towards sum we have n different subpaths.
Note however there is another algorithm which uses take/not-take approach and at most there is 2 branch at a node in recursion tree. Hence the time complexity for this algorithm is O(2^(n*m))
ex: say coins = [1, 1] sum = 2 there are 11 nodes/points to visit in the recursion tree for 6 paths(leaves) then complexity is at most 2^(2*2) => 2^4 => 16 (Hence 11 nodes visiting for a max of 16 possibility is correct but little loose on upper bound).
def get_count(coins, n, sum):
if(n == 0): # no coins left, to try a combination that matches the sum
return 0
if(sum == 0): # no more sum left to match, means that we have completely co-incided with our trial
return 1 # (return success)
# don't-include the last coin in the sum calc so, leave it and try rest
excluded = get_count(coins, n-1, sum)
included = 0
if(coins[n-1] <= sum):
# include the last coin in the sum calc, so reduce by its quantity in the sum
# we assume here that n is constant ie, it is supplied in unlimited(we can choose same coin again and again),
included = get_count(coins, n, sum-coins[n-1])
return included+excluded