Building a Pickup Truck The 2013 Sierra 1500 pickup truck by

Building a Pickup Truck The 2013 Sierra 1500 pickup truck by GMC comes with six body styles, two drive types, nine exterior colors, two interior colors, two styles of wheels, three choices of engines, and three choices of automatic transmissions. How many different models of the pickup truck can be built on the basis of these options? Source: GMC.

Solution

We can use here,

Generalized Multiplication Principle Suppose,

a task T1 can be performed in N1 ways,

a task T 2 can be performed in N 2 ways,…,

and , finally a task Tn can be performed in Nn ways.

Then the number of ways of performing the tasks T1 , T 2 , …, Tn in succession is given by the product N1 • N2 • … • Nn .

We have given,

The 2013 Sierra 1500 pickup truck by GMC comes with six body styles, two drive types, nine exterior colors, two interior colors, two styles of wheels, three choices of engines, and three choices of automatic transmissions.

Therefore, 6 * 2 *9*2*2*3*3 = 3,888 different models of the pickup truck can be built.