Question

A restaurant offerd a choice of 4 salads, 9 mains courses, and 3 desserts. How many possible 3- course meals are there?

Answer 1

`108`

Explanation:

A 3-course Meal is made of a Salad (4 choices), a Main Course (9 choices), and a Dessert (3 Choices).

To find all the possible 3-course meals, you multiple 4, 9, and 3:
`4*9*3 = 108`

Answer 2

108 Combinations!

Explanation:

Assuming the three-course meals cannot consist of 3 salads, mains, or desserts, we can only pick 1 from each set.

Since we're only picking one from each, the equation for determining the number of options looks like this:

`"Total"=N_"salad"xxN_"main"xxN_"dessert"`

This works out, if you think about it. If you only had one salad option, there are still 9 main course options, as well as 3 dessert options. If you figure that for every main course option, there are 3 dessert options, you have `9xx3=27` options for just the main course and dessert!

When we put it all together:

`"Total"=4xx9xx3`

`"Total"=4xx27`

`"Total"=108`