Question

A group of 25 people are going to run a race. the top 3 finishers get gold, silver, or bronze. how many possibilities are there?

Answer 1

There are 13,800 possible ways for the top 3 finishers to be determined in this race.

Step-by-step explanation:

The number of possibilities for the top 3 finishers in a race of 25 people can be found using permutation. In this case, we need to select 3 people from a group of 25, where order matters. Therefore, we can use the permutation formula:

P(n, r) = n! / (n - r)!

In this case, n = 25 (the total number of people) and r = 3 (the number of finishers we need to select).

Plugging in these values into the formula:

P(25, 3) = 25! / (25 - 3)! = 25! / 22!

Using a calculator or factorial table:

P(25, 3) = 25 * 24 * 23 = 13,800

There are 13,800 possible ways for the top 3 finishers to be determined in this race.