L.A. Wedding Caterers offers a wedding reception buffet. Suppose a menu is planned around five different salads, seven entrees, four side dishes, and eight desserts. There are eight different choices of salads, ten different choices of entrees, eight different choices of side dishes, and ten different choices of desserts. How many menus are possible? Please help!

Question

kirbykirby · Answer

Assuming you have 6-sided dice, then think of all possible ways you may get a sum of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, or 7 using the two dice. Now, if you think of two dice, the smallest number on each die is "1", so the smallest sum you can get is "2". 

So... you only consider all possible ways of getting a sum of 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

For example: To get "2", you can have (1, 1)
To get "3", you can have (2, 1) or (1, 2)
etc...