Question

A certain company assigns employees to offices in such a way that some of the offices can be empty and more than one employee can be assigned to an office. In how many ways can the company assign 3 employees to 2 different offices?

(A) 5
(B) 6
(C) 7
(D) 8
(E) 9

Answer 1

There are 8 ways.

Step-by-step explanation:

For each employee there are two possibilities: first office and second office.

Therefore,

the number of ways the company can assign 3 employees to 2 different offices will be :

`2^(3)` = 8

We can also look at this problem like suppose ABC are employees.

We can arrange them like -

0 ABC

ABC 0

AB C

BC A

CA B

A BC

B CA

C AB

So, there are total 8 WAYS.