Question

You need to put your reindeer, Balthazar, Rudy, Jebediah,and Ezekiel, in a single-file line to pull your sleigh. In howmany ways can you arrange your reindeer?

Answer 1

This is a permutation case where the order matters.

First, we can choose which reindeer goes first, the number of possible candidates is 4. Now, the number of reindeer that could occupy the second place is 3 ( because one of them is already in the first position). Following this same reasoning, we get that the number of possible candidates for positions 3 and 4 are 2 and 1 correspondingly.

Finally, the number of possible combinations is the product of the possible combinations of each place.

Answer: 24.