Question

A restaurant offers three sizes of coffee and four differerſt types of coffee.

Coffee can be ordered with or without cream and with or without sugar.
The restaurant also has six bagel options. A bagel can be ordered plain, with
butter, or with cream cheese. How many different ways can you choose a
coffee and bagel at this restaurant?

Answer 1

Answer: 864

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Work Shown:

There are,

• 3 sizes of coffee
• 4 types of coffee
• 2 choices for cream (you pick it or you leave it out)
• 2 choices for sugar (same idea as the cream)

This means there are 3*4*2*2 = 12*4 = 48 different coffees. We'll use this value later, so let A = 48.

There are 6 bagel options. Also, there are 3 choices in terms of if you order the bagel plain, with butter, or with cream cheese. This leads to 6*3 = 18 different ways to order a bagel. Let B = 18.

Multiply the values of A and B to get the final answer

A*B = 48*18 = 864

There are 864 ways to order a coffee and bagel at this restaurant.

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If you're curious why you multiply the values out, consider this smaller example.

Let's say you had 3 choices of coffee and 2 choices for a bagel. Form a table with 3 rows and 2 columns. Place the different coffee choices along the left to form each row. Along the top, we'll have the two different bagel choices (one for each column).

This 3 by 2 table leads to 3*2 = 6 individual table cells inside. Each cell in the table represents a coffee+bagel combo. This idea is applied to the section above, but we have a lot more options.