I have 17 stops along a path. The user can start any where on the map. Stop 1, Stop 2, Stop 3... so forth in any order. SO the driver can go to Stop 10, then STop 2, stop4, stop 3...through stop 17 in any order, but just know that there are only 17. How many potential combinations can there be? [17,11,3,10,1,6,5,4,2,16,12,15,13,9,7,14,8] [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17] [17,16,15,14,13,12,11,10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1]
17*17*17*17*17*17*17*17*17*17*17*17*17*17= x
Is there an easy way to calculate this..sorry i really do not know
Note that the combination are simply the permutations $$17!=17\cdot16\cdot 15 \cdot...\cdot 2\cdot 1$$
indeed we can choose the first stop in 17 ways, the second one in 16 ways and so on, thus for the Rule of product we obtain the result.