Does order count in this question?

46 Views Asked by At

People at a convention are offered 5 tours on each of 3 days. In how many ways can a person arrange to go on a tour planned by this convention ?

I think the correct answer to this question is : ${}_3C_5$

As order does not count.

Is this correct ?

Update :

This is an assignment question and is all the information I've been provided. Let's assume all 6 tours are distinct. A person may go on any number of tours. Does this clarify ?

1

There are 1 best solutions below

0
On BEST ANSWER

Yes, order of the tours should matter. I'm assuming that the person must chose one of the five tours each day, and can't repeat tours. You can chose the tours in $\binom53$ ways, which get permuted in $3!$ ways to give the total number of arrangements as $\binom53\cdot3!=P^5_3$

Edit

The case of the person going on any number of tours is a bit more involved. Let us say the number of tours he takes on the first day is $n_1$, on the second day is $n_2$ and the third day is $n_3$. Then, assuming that the person doesn't repeat tours,

$$0\le n_1+n_2+n_3\le5$$

Introduce a dummy variable, say $n$, such that $n_1+n_2+n_3+n=5$ with $0\le n\le5$.

$n_1+n_2+n_3=5-n$. If you're familiar with the Stars and Bars method, you'll know that the number of unique ordered triples $(n_1,n_2,n_3)$ is given by $\frac{(7-n)!}{2!(5-n)!}$. We can select $5-n$ tours out of $5$ in $\binom5{5-n}=\binom5n$ ways, and they can permute in $(5-n)!$ ways (note here even the order of tours in a day matters), giving you a total of $\frac{(7-n)!}{2!(5-n)!}\cdot\binom5n\cdot(5-n)!=\frac{(7-n)!}{2!}\cdot\binom5n$ tours for any value of $n$. The total number of distinct tours is just the summation

$\displaystyle\sum^5_{n=0}\frac{(7-n)!}{2!}\cdot\binom5n=\sum_{n=0}^5\frac{5!(7-n)!}{2!(5-n)!n!}=\sum^5_{n=0}60\cdot\frac{(7-n)(6-n)}{n!}=5056$