Question

Melissa won a week-long cruise in a contest and is working out the details of the trip. She can choose from 4 destinations and 5 departure dates. Since each cruise lets passengers pick one of 5 different day trips, Melissa also needs to choose one of those. How many different cruises can Melissa plan?

Answer 1

To solve this problem, it is necessary to use the fundamental counting principle, which is the multiplication counting rule.

It says that if we have two events, a and b. The total number of possible outcomes will be a times b (a*b).

In this case, a are the destinations she can choose and b are the departure dates. To find how many cruises can she plan, multiply the number of options of a and b, this is 4*5:

$4\cdot5=20$

In this case, she can plan 20 different cruises.