I am trying to figure out how many combinations there are with yogurt shop that has 12 flavors, 40 toppings, and consumers can choose 1 or more flavors as their base, and of course add 0 to theoretically 40 toppings. How would I calculate that?

Question

I am trying to figure out how many combinations there are with yogurt shop that has 12 flavors, 40 toppings, and consumers can choose 1 or more flavors as their base, and of course add 0 to theoretically 40 toppings.  How would I calculate that?

anonymous · Answer

if they can choose as many flavors as they want, then just the combination of flavors is 12! (that is 12 factorial, 12*11*10*9 etc). then you have to multiply that by the number of toppings that they can choose, if they can only choose one topping, then you multiply it by 40, if they can choose 2,  multiply it by 40*39, etc

anonymous · Answer

Thanks for the quick reply mikeO!