Question

A deli offers a lunch-special that comes with soup, a sandwich, and a dessert. The soup choices are tomato or onion, the sandwich choices are ham, chicken, tuna, or pastrami, and the dessert choices are cake or pie.

a. Would this problem best be solved by using a table, a list, or a tree diagram. Explain your answer.
b. Use one of those methods to determine the size of the lunch-special sample space.

Answer 1

A. This problem would best be solved using a tree diagram.

B. In order to solve it, you would construct a tree with the first soup choices growing into the other options. Then, after listing every alternative, you could either add them all up to obtain your answer or you could just use the formula 2*4*2=16, which would result in 16 possibilities.