A bag contains $17$ identical cubes except for their colour, with four coloured orange, six coloured blue and seven coloured white. How many different arrangements of these cubes are possible when $3$ are drawn from a bag and placed in a line?
Would it be $3 \times 3 \times 3$?
How many possibilities are there for the first ball? 3
How many for the second? 3
How many for the third? 3
All balls are independent (since there are always more than 3 balls of the same color)
Thus the answer is 3*3*3 = 27.