Question

There is a contest being held at Company A. Company A employs forty people. The first 3 employees to correctly complete a riddle each receives an extra vacation day that year. What is the probability that those first 3 employees are in the order of Jack, Bill, and John?Write your answer as an exact fraction which is reduced as much as possible.

Answer 1

Given that company A employs forty peole and that the first 3 employees to correctly complete a riddle receive extra vacation days that year.

The number of possible ways that any 3 employees correctly complete the riddle is:

`40*39*38=59280`

Given that the first three employees are in the order of Jack, Bill and John.

The number of possible ways of having this order is just 1.

The probability formula is:

`\frac{\text{Number of favorable outcomes}}{\text{Number of possible outcomes}}`

Therefore, the probability that the 3 employees are in the order Jack, Bill, and John is:

`(1)/(59280)`