Question

PLEASE HELP!! WILL MEDAL!!

15 pigs are entered in the "Best Pig" competition at the county fair. The judges will award very special pigs with blue, red, and white ribbons. In how many different ways can these ribbons be awarded to 3 of the 15 pigs?

Answer 1

I got 8 different ways but you may want to double check that.

Answer 2

We are looking for the number of ways of choosing three pigs from a sample of 15. We assume that the order in which we choose the three of these does not matter, and that one we choose a pig for a ribbon we cannot choose it again.

So we are working out "15 choose 3", written as:
\[\left(\begin{matrix}15 \\ 3\end{matrix}\right)\]
The easiest way of working this out is by using the "choose" function on a scientific calculator. It think it should give you 455, but check it for yourself.