The Fundamental Principle of Counting

Overview of Today

We started off today's class taking a quick look at the blog and then discussed the Bento picture (The first Slide for today). We discussed different ways to arrange the three vegetables in the yellow dish (came to the conclusion it was six). After that we reviewed the homework for last night, and moved on to The Fundamental Principle of Counting.

The Fundamental Principle of Counting

The Fundamental Principle of Counting states: If there are M ways to do a first thing and N ways to do a second thing then there are M x N ways to do both things (found on slide 7).
For Example:
You need to run your weekly errands and need to make a stop at a mall, a grocery store and a hardware store. In your area there are two malls, three grocery stores and two hardware stores approximately the same distance from your house. How many different possible routes are there that include stopping at one of each store.

First pick out the given information:
2 Malls
3 Grocery Stores
2 Hardware stores

Then multiply:
2 Malls x 3 Grocery Stores x 2 Hardware Stores
=12 Different Routes

For more practice:
http://regentsprep.org/regents/Math/counting/praccnt.htm
This site contains simple questions and explanations.

Important Things to Know:

Today there was not a great number of people who completed their homework and Mr. K was not thrilled. He has implemented Homework Quizzes. Mr. K will be checking our homework from a past date so it is important that we date our work as well as label the questions properly. The quiz will just be to hand in the question when it is asked.

There are a couple homework questions at the end of the slides.

Tomorrows scribe will be Alvina :)