Question

Randall's sock drawer contains 5 black socks, 2 gray socks, 3 white socks, and 1 brown sock. If Randall selects 2 socks from the drawer in the dark, how many combinations of sock colors are possible?

Answer 1

A 9
B 15
C 10

Answer 2

im not that good with Possible Outcomes

Answer 3

plz just help me

Answer 4

@RebeccaPink6398

Answer 5

I am sorry, Katie, but this is one of those problems that I do not know how to do using combinations and permutation rules.

One alternative to using those rules would be to draw tree diagrams and then to count all the unique different possibilities for combos of sock colors.

For example, if the first sock you picked were black, then the next one could be black, gray, white or brown. How many combos are there here? If B=black, G=gray, W=white and N=brown, you have four: BB, BG, BW and BN, assuming that the first sock was B.

Supposing that you were to pick the brown sock first: What would be left as the 2nd sock of that pair? Black, Gray and White (not Brown, since there's only one brown sock).
We'd get these combos: NB, NG and NW. Note that NB could be considered to be the same as BN, so don't count that.

And so on.

Yes, it 's a lot of work. Yes, I find it easier to understand this problem by considering all the possible combinations and not counting twice any that are really the same (BN and NB).