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Math Challenge II-A Combinatorics

 
 
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Re: Math Challenge II-A Combinatorics
by Areteem Professor - Wednesday, September 4, 2019, 1:11 PM
 

The slices of cake are different (think about an actual cake, even if you try to cut exactly the same, some slices will have different frosting, be slightly bigger/smaller, etc.).

The problem with an answer of $6^{10}$ is that each person is choosing "a", meaning one, slice of cake. Therefore the first person has $10$ choices, the second $9$, etc, giving answer choice (C). If you wanted to do people choosing slices of cake, you'd first need to choose which $6$ of the $10$ slices are used (so order doesn't matter), and then give out one slice to each person (be careful here, as then this is with no repetitions). This would give $\binom{10}{6} \cdot 6!$ which also simplifies to (C).