Five athletes are running in a race, how many different ways can athletes finish 1st, 2nd, and 3rd * 2 points

Question

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Answer 1

Assuming that there cannot be a tie, here is how you can approach this problem.

There are five runners, so there are five different possibilities of who can come in first place.

Now, once someone comes in first place, there are only 4 runners left who can come in second place.

Likewise, there are only 3 runners left who can come in third place.

You want to then multiply 5*4*3 to represent the different combinations we can make for each place.

This gives us a total of 60 different possible ways that the runners can come in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place, assuming no ties.