If "ALABAMA" were written so that the A's were of different colors, like this, "ALABAMA", the number of permutations would be 7!. However, since the four A's look exactly alike in "ALABAMA", the number of distinguishable permutations is much smaller. So what we do is start with the 7! arrangements of "ALABAMA", and divide by the number of ways the four A's can be arranged within each permutation, so that in effect they will all be counted only once. So the answer is= = 210. "ALGEBRA" has = = 2520 distinguishable permutations, we only need to divide by 2 because there are only 2 A's that are indistinguishable. FLORIDA has 7! = 5040 distinguishable permutations. We don't need to divide by anything because all 7 letters are distinguishable. Edwin