strategies

Question

Ryan is given a list of 4 bands and asked to take a vote His vote must have the names of his favorite and second favorite bands from the list. How many different votes are possible?

Answer 1

If order matters (that is, if he is listing his favorite band as number 1 and his second favorite as number 2) then there are 4 choices for number 1 and 3 choices left for number 2, so there are 4*3 = 12 possible votes  

 

If order doesn't matter (that is, he is just picking any 2 out of the 4 bands without regard to which is number 1 and which is number 2) then we must divide the total number of possible votes by 2 to get 12/2 = 6, since any listing of Band A and Band B would be the same as listing Band B and then Band A