Question

Please HELP FAST! There are 19 figure skaters in the Olympic women's competition, including 3 Americans. The gold medal goes to first place, silver to second, and bronze to third. Suppose that the Olympics powers-that-be decide that exactly one American must win a medal (no more and no less). Now how many ways are there to award the medals?

Answer 1

3*18*17=918

Answer 2

my reasoning is that there are 3 people that can win gold( one of the three Americans), there are now 18 people that can win silver as one american has \already won and hence cant win silver as well. For bronze 17 people by the same reasoning. Hence you multiply them. Im assuming you are familiar with combinatorics.