Question

The Morris family is selecting a furniture set. A furniture set has a bed, a desk and a dresser. There are 4 beds, 2 desks, and 1 dresser to select from. How many different furniture sets could they select?

Answer 1

8 possibilities.

Explanation:

There are many combinations. Instead of drawing out a chart and going through every single possibility, deleting the recurring ones, and recounting again, you need to multiply.

Since there are four beds and a dresser, obviously, there can only be four combinations to choose from. The Morris family can choose bed A with the drawer, bed B with the drawer, bed C with the drawer, or bed D with the drawer. All of these possibilities contain the same drawer, so it's pretty straightforward: only four combinations. This is 4 x 1.

Next, the family needs to choose between the two desks. They can choose bed A with desk A, bed A with desk B, bed B with desk A, bed B with desk B... and so on. Therefore, there will be four combinations of beds with desk A, and four combinations of beds with desk B. 4 + 4 = 8. Or, we could simply multiply the four beds by the two desks: 4 x 2 = 8. Both equations supply the same answer.

All in all, we need to multiply the number of choices together to get the total number of combinations. That's 4 x 2 x 1, which is 8.