Big Ideas Math Geometry, 2014
BI
Big Ideas Math Geometry, 2014 View details
5. Permutations and Combinations
Continue to next subchapter

Exercise 5 Page 704

Practice makes perfect
We want to find out in how many ways we can arrange the letters in the word ROCK. To find the number of permutations of the letters in the given word, we can use the Fundamental Counting Principle.
Value of n Number of choices for nth letter
1 4
2 3
3 2
4 1
Number of permutations 4* 3* 2* 1=24

Therefore, there are 24 ways we can arrange all of the letters in the word ROCK.

We want to find out in how many ways we can arrange 2 of the letters in the word ROCK. When arranging 2 letters of the given word, we have 4 choices for the first letter and 3 choices for the second letter. Let's use the Fundamental Counting Principle one more time!

3* 4=12 Therefore, there are 12 ways we can arrange 2 of the letters in the word ROCK.