146k views
8 votes
Problem 2 Six different jobs need to be done today at the restaurant where you work. You have a pool of nine available workers. If you can assign only one worker to each job and no more than one job to a worker, how many different worker/job assignments are possible

1 Answer

9 votes

Answer: 60480

========================================================

Step-by-step explanation:

The order matters because the jobs are different. This means we'll use a permutation.

We have n = 9 workers to pick from and r = 6 jobs to fill.

Plug those values into the nPr permutation formula.


n P r = (n!)/( (n-r)! )\\\\9 P 6 = (9!)/( (9-6)! )\\\\9 P 6 = (9!)/( 3! )\\\\9 P 6 = (9*8*7*6*5*4*3*2*1)/( 3*2*1 )\\\\9 P 6 = 9*8*7*6*5*4 \ \ \text{.... Note: The 3*2*1 cancels}\\\\9 P 6 = 60480\\\\

There are 60480 ways to assign the 9 workers to the 6 different jobs where order matters.

----------------------

Another approach:

Label the 6 jobs as A,B,C,D,E,F

For job A, we have 9 workers to pick from.

For job B, we have 8 workers to pick from. This is because it states that there is "no more than one job to a worker".

For job C, we have 7 workers to pick from. And so on. We have this countdown going on. We stop once we reach job F.

We end up with 9*8*7*6*5*4 = 60480 different permutations

The string "9*8*7*6*5*4" is found in the second to last step of the section above.

User Treb
by
8.4k points

No related questions found

Welcome to QAmmunity.org, where you can ask questions and receive answers from other members of our community.

9.4m questions

12.2m answers

Categories