Final answer:
There are 9 ways to choose 8 books from a group of 9, calculated using the combinations formula C(9, 8) = 9! / [(9-8)! 8!] = 9.
Step-by-step explanation:
The question posed is related to combinatorics, a topic in mathematics. Specifically, the student is asking about the number of ways to choose 8 books from a group of 9. To calculate this, we use combinations because the order in which we select the books does not matter. Given 9 books, the number of ways to choose 8 out of them can be represented by 9 choose 8, which is denoted by the formula C(n, k) = n! / [(n-k)! k!] where n is the total number of items, and k is the number of items to be chosen.
Using the formula, we calculate the number of combinations as follows:
- Here, n is 9 and k is 8.
- So, C(9, 8) = 9! / [(9-8)! 8!] = 9.
- Therefore, there are 9 ways to choose 8 books from a group of 9.