Question

How many ways can a 3-card hand be selected from a standard 52-card deck?

Answer 1

in this situation, the order of cards in a hand doesn't matter (a hand that's ace of hearts, jack of hearts, and king of hearts is the same even if you switch the order of the cards)

so we use the combination formula.

\[\frac{ n! }{ r!(n-r)! }\]where n is the total number of items (52 total cards), and r is the number of items in each selection (3 cards per hand). plug in the n and r values and evaluate.