Fundamental Principle of Counting

Last night my little brother and I went to watch a movie to Cinepolis. It was a
large pentagonal shaped multiplex. During the interval, my brother went out to
buy some popcorn when he noticed that there are 5 different entry doors each
located exactly at the middle of the side.

He came back and asked me, “Why are there so many doors in the hall?”

“ As so many people come to watch the movies, 5 doors make it more

convenient for a smooth entry and exit”, I said.

“ Okay, so one person can come through an entry door and exit through any
door. Then, there are so many ways of entering and exiting the hall. “

“ That’s absolutely right”, I said.

“ Okay, so in how many ways one can a person enter and exit the hall?”, he
asked again.

To solve this, we need to visualize the Doors and Hall like this. Let’s call the
doors D1,D2,D3,D4,D5. So, if a person enters through D1, he can exit through
D2,D3,D4,D5 and D1 itself. Similarly, if he enters through D2, he can exit
through D1,D3,D4,D5 and D2 itself. Similarly...for D3, D4 & D5.

So the total number of ways will be 5+5+5+5+5 or 5*5=25.

This is called the called Fundamental Principle of Counting. We could count

easily because the number of doors were only 5, but had it been a big number, it
would have consumed a lot of time to count it. Therefore, by fundamental
principle of counting, we can count an event without actually counting it.

Let’s take another example.

Suppose there are 3 cars and 2 owners. In how many ways, each car will have
an owner?

To solve this, let’s name the cars as C1,C2,C3 and the owners as A1,A2.

What are the possible combinations that are possible?

{C1-A1,C2-A1,C3-A1} { C1-A2,C2-A2,C3-A2} {C1-A1,C2-A2,C3-A2}{C1-

A2,C2-A1,C3-A2}{C1-A1,C2-A1,C3-A2} {C1-A1,C2-A2,C3-A1}
Instead of the above counting, we can simply multiply 3 cars * 2 owners= 6
ways