TITLE: Why is the number of ways of choosing $0$ items from $n$ items $1$?
QUESTION [43 upvotes]: It seems easy to grasp that number of ways of choosing $n$ items from $n$ items is 1. But I am unable to understand why is it 1 for choosing 0 items.

REPLY [3 votes]: First of all, this requires us to be precise about what we mean by a "way". A "way" in this context is not meant to include things like, for example, whether you take items using one or two hands, or you reach into the box using kitchen tongs to remove balls, whether you perform a dance such as the Fandango, Twerking, or now the Yeet, before you remove balls, or any of a number of such acts. If that were allowed, then the number of "ways" would be very hard to define, and certainly much greater than $\binom{n}{k}$.
Rather what defines a "way" is solely which balls were selected - given that, as this problem requires, the balls all look different and so are individually identifiable as different from each other, and thus we are able to describe such a thing. That is, it is simply what you'd write down on a piece of paper regarding which balls you pulled out, like a shopping list, and also like a shopping list, noting that the order in which you wrote them down is another unimportant detail when it comes to which ones you will actually have.
So what you're asking is, "is there a selection of balls which contains no balls?" Sure. Don't withdraw any. Leave the notepaper on which the selection is to be recorded, blank. Or write "I didn't choose any" - the difference between those is the same as all the other ones I mentioned above. Those are all selections that contain no balls. They do not enumerate balls.
But of course there is a counterargument, and perhaps this is the source of your difficulty. The counterargument you could make here is that a selection "with no balls on it" or a list "with no items" written on it is not a selection, or not a list. Or you could argue that withdrawing no items, or doing nothing, is not actually an action. With regard to the first one, I think the intuition behind this is probably why most cultures did not invent the concept of zero as a number. Conversely, the fact we accept zero as a number - which makes it possible to talk about this at all - means we are by definition talking about cases where we have nothing in hand, or where things are empty, and thus an empty list - here, an empty set - should be a conceivable possibility if you are to admit that the number "0" used in the question is even meaningful, which is needed for the question to make sense in the first place. Thus we will admit a blank sheet of paper as a list with no items.
Moreover, many would say that the idea that "doing nothing" or choosing "nothing" doesn't count as doing something or as making a choice, is a grievous mistake, with consequences that reach far beyond mathematics. You may have heard the phrase "all it takes for evil to triumph is for good humans to do nothing".
You would thus indeed be very wise to heed that
$$\binom{n}{0} = 1$$