SOLUTION: Anthony wants to visit the 20 colleges?

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Question 1033270: Anthony wants to visit the 20 colleges?
Found 2 solutions by KMST, Whiteboy:
Answer by KMST(5328) About Me  (Show Source):
You can put this solution on YOUR website!
THE FIFTH GRADER'S THOUGHT:
Anthony lets luck of the draw decide.
He writes the name of each college on a small piece of paper, and
puts the pieces of paper in a bag to draw the names at random.
He draws the first piece of paper, and marks it as the first college where he will spend a night.
Of course, he does not put that piece of paper back in the bag, before drawing again to find another college where he will spend a night.
He then draws {"without replacement") a second and a third piece of paper that decide where he will spend the second and third nights respectively.
That decides the schedule of college sleepovers.
There are 10%2A9%2A8=720 possible schedules
(10 possibilities for the first draw, 9 for the second, and 8 for the third draw).
However, each set of 3 pieces of papers could be drawn in
3%2A2%2A1=6 orders, and it would still be the same set, just different orders.
There are 720 different college sleepover schedules,
but they represent 720%2F6=120 different sets of sleepover college choices.
The chances that 1 particular set of colleges could be chosen that way is 1 in 120 ,
so the probability that Anthony spends a night at Rutgers University, a night at the University of Miami, and a night at Clemson University is
1%2F120 .

THE MATH TEACHER SAYS:
This is a case of combinations (setof items, where order does not matter).
The number of combinations of r items taken without replacement from a set of n items is
%28matrix%282%2C1%2Cn%2Cr%29%29=n%21%2F%28r%21%28n-r%29%21%29 .
In this case n=10 and r=3 ,
so the number of possible sets of 3 colleges where Anthony could spend the night,
out of the 10 colleges he wanted to visit is
.
{Rutgers U, U Miami, Clemson U} is one 3-college subset of the 10-college set of colleges that Anthony wants to visit.
The probability that the set of 3 colleges where Anthony spends a night
is that 1 particular set out of the 120 possible sets is
1%2F120 .

Answer by Whiteboy(6) About Me  (Show Source):