document.write( "Question 944565: A student has 5 engineering books, 3 math books, and 4 chemistry books. She is to put them all onto three shelves (top, middle, lower) with each shelf containing only books of a single discipline, but the order on any particular shelf is completely free. In how many ways can she do this ?\r
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document.write( "I'm stuck here, it seems easy enough, but why would the number of books matter if each shelf contains one discipline and the order on each shelf doesn't matter? Am I missing something here?
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document.write( "It looks along the lines of 5!*3!*4!*3!, but not sure. \n" );
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Algebra.Com's Answer #576755 by Edwin McCravy(20055)![]() ![]() You can put this solution on YOUR website! \r\n" ); document.write( "No, you're right about the number of books. The answer is just 6.\r\n" ); document.write( "Here's why.\r\n" ); document.write( "\r\n" ); document.write( "The books of each discipline are NOT ordered, However the shelves \r\n" ); document.write( "ARE ordered (top. middle, lower)\r\n" ); document.write( "\r\n" ); document.write( "We have some engineering books, some math books, and some chemistry books.\r\n" ); document.write( "You are right that it doesn't matter how many of each, so the 5,3, and 4 have\r\n" ); document.write( "nothing to do with the problem. They're just to throw you off.\r\n" ); document.write( "\r\n" ); document.write( "So the answer is just 3! or 6.\r\n" ); document.write( "\r\n" ); document.write( "Here are the 6 ways\r\n" ); document.write( " 1 2 3 4 5 6\r\n" ); document.write( "------------------------------------------ \r\n" ); document.write( "top shelf 5E 5E 3M 3M 4C 4C\r\n" ); document.write( "------------------------------------------ \r\n" ); document.write( "middle shelf 3M 4C 5E 4C 5E 3M\r\n" ); document.write( "------------------------------------------\r\n" ); document.write( "lower shelf 4C 3M 4C 5E 3M 5E\r\n" ); document.write( "------------------------------------------\r\n" ); document.write( "\r\n" ); document.write( "Edwin\n" ); document.write( " |