. How many different ways can you build your pizza?

Question

It is lunchtime and you wish to build a pizza with 1 choice of crust, 1 meat, 1 vegetable. You have the following choices: 2 types of crust, 4 types of meats, and 7 types of vegetables. How many different ways can you build your pizza?

Answer 1

 

2 possible crusts

4 possible meats (to me pepperoni is the only choice)

7 possible vegetables (I personally prefer mushrooms and onions, but I won't enforce this)

 

For every possible crust, there are 4 possible meats and 7 possible vegetables

So, there are 2 x 4 x 7 = 56 possible pizzas

Answer 2

Imagine that for each characteristic of your pizza (crust, meat, vegetable), you have a slot representing the number of options for each characteristic. Then we'd have the following:

 

2 4 7

 

Multiplying these numbers gives us:

 

(2 possible crusts)*(4 possible meats)*(7 possible vegetables)

 

= 56 possible pizzas