Stockmoose16 wrote:
a. In how many ways can the letters in NUUNSUAL be arranged?
b. For the arrangements in part (a), how many have all three U's
together?
c. How many of the arrangements in part (a) have no consecutive U's?
Does anyone know how to figure out C?
A)Total number of distinct words possible-
NUUNSUAL is a 8 letter word. Letter N appears twice and U appears thrice
so it is 8! / (2! * 3!) = 3360 different words
B) all U's together - To find the arrangements where 3 U's appear together, we have to consider them to be a single unit.
For ease of understanding and to avoid mistakes, let us replace 3 U's by another letter say X
UUUNNSAL = XNNSAL
Now XNNSAL has 6 units (or letters) with 2 N's
so no of words = 6!/2! = 360 different words with 3 U's together
C) Words with no consecutive U's -
To find words with no consecutive U's = Number of different words that can be formed - Number of words with consecutive U's
words with no consecutive U's = 3360- 360 = 3000 words.
HTH
P.S. I EDITED THE SILLY CALCULATION ERROR I DID IN A AND THUS IN C
Last edited by
amitdgr on Wed Sep 17, 2008 5:59 am, edited 1 time in total.