How many ways can 4 students be arranged in a row?

Question

How many ways can 4 students be arranged in a row?

1 Answer

Impact of this question

1500 views around the world

You can reuse this answer
Creative Commons License

Answer 1 · 2017-10-24T10:38:01

$4! = 4 \times 3 \times 2 \times 1 = 24$ $4! = 4 xx 3 xx 2 xx 1 = 24$ possibilities

Explanation:

Let's say they're going to be sat on chairs, numbered $1, 2, 3, 4$ $1,2,3,4$ .

To start with, the students are stood off to the side and you have to sit them on the chairs.

For chair $1$ $1$ , you have $4$ $4$ students stood off to the side, so there are $4$ $4$ possibilities for chair $1$ $1$ .

No matter which student you choose, you will sit a student on the chair and have $3$ $3$ students left standing. This means that for chair $2$ $2$ , you have $3$ $3$ possibilities.

Now again, no matter who you choose, you have $2$ $2$ students left standing, so there are $2$ $2$ possibilities for chair $3$ $3$ .

Now you'll sit the last one down on the last chair - there's only $1$ $1$ possibility for the last chair.

In probability, when you have certain numbers of possibilities for a certain number of events, you multiply the numbers of possibilities, so you have

$4 \times 3 \times 2 \times 1 = 24$ $4 xx 3 xx 2 xx 1 = 24$ possibilities overall.

This is also known as $4$ $4$ -factorial, or $4!$ $4!$ .

Science

Math

Humanities

... and beyond

How many ways can 4 students be arranged in a row?

1 Answer

Explanation:

Related questions

Impact of this question