Illustrating the Combination of

Objects
MATH 10 Week 3
 Objective
• Illustrate the Combination of Objects.
 Combinations
• Combination is a mathematical technique that
determines the number of possible
arrangements in a collection of items where
the order of the selection does not matter.
• In combinations, you can select the items in
any order.
 Study and do the tasks below, and
then answer the questions that follow.
Write AI if arrangement is important and ANI if arrangement is not
important in the given activities.

1. Choosing 5 questions to answer out of 10 questions in a test

2. Opening a combination lock
3. Winning in a contest
4. Selecting 7 people to form a Student Affairs Committee
5. Forming triangles from 6 distinct points in which no 3 points are
collinear
6. Assigning seats to guests at dinner
7. Drawing a set of 6 numbers in a lottery containing numbers 1 to 45
8. Entering the PIN (Personal Identification Number) of your ATM card
9. Selecting 3 posters to hang out of 6 different posters
10. Listing the elements of subsets of a given set
• From the activities you have done, you
identified tasks in which the arrangement or
order is important (permutations) and those
in which order is not important
(combinations).
• You recalled the Fundamental Counting
Principle FCP as well as permutation which
are essential concepts in understanding
combinations.
Remember: If there is a set S with n elements,
and if r is a nonnegative integer less than or
equal to n, then each subset of S containing r
distinct elements is called a combination of S.
The number of combinations of n objects taken r
at a time is denoted by
• Suppose now, that you are asked to form
different triangles out of 4 points plotted, say,
A, B, C, and D, of which no three are collinear.
• How can we find the number of combinations
more systematically? Consider this: If order of
the letters is important, then we have the
following possibilities:

• The number of different orders of 4 vertices

taken 3 at a time is given by
• There are 24 possibilities. Since you learned in
Geometry that we can name a triangle using
its three vertices in any order, then if we look
more closely, we can see that all the triangles
in the same column are identical. Thus, the
actual number of combinations is
• Example 1. In how many ways can a
committee consisting of 4 members be
formed from 8 people? Solution 1: (Using the
formula) n = 8, r = 4
 What I have learned?
1. How do you determine if a situation involves
combinations?

2. To find the total number of polygons that can

be formed from 7 points on a plane with no
three of which are collinear, Joy answered:
Find the unknown in each item