If four cats and five mice enter a race

  • Thread starter Thread starter Caldus
  • Start date Start date
  • Tags Tags
    Race
Caldus
Messages
106
Reaction score
0
If four cats and five mice enter a race, how many ways can they finish with a mouse placing first, second, and third?

I was about to say that the answer would be P 9, 5 but not sure...
 
Mathematics news on Phys.org
Seems to me like the answer would be 6! = 720. But I might be talking out of my ass.
 
Last edited:
5*4*3*6!

In first place, there are only 5 choices, one of the mice. In second place, there are only 4, since one of the mice is already chosen. In third, there're 3 choices. In the remaining, all choices are open.

cookiemonster

Edit: Noticed a weird word in there that didn't belong.
 
Last edited:
are the mice distinguishable...? it will influence the answer.
 
Insights auto threads is broken atm, so I'm manually creating these for new Insight articles. In Dirac’s Principles of Quantum Mechanics published in 1930 he introduced a “convenient notation” he referred to as a “delta function” which he treated as a continuum analog to the discrete Kronecker delta. The Kronecker delta is simply the indexed components of the identity operator in matrix algebra Source: https://www.physicsforums.com/insights/what-exactly-is-diracs-delta-function/ by...
Fermat's Last Theorem has long been one of the most famous mathematical problems, and is now one of the most famous theorems. It simply states that the equation $$ a^n+b^n=c^n $$ has no solutions with positive integers if ##n>2.## It was named after Pierre de Fermat (1607-1665). The problem itself stems from the book Arithmetica by Diophantus of Alexandria. It gained popularity because Fermat noted in his copy "Cubum autem in duos cubos, aut quadratoquadratum in duos quadratoquadratos, et...
I'm interested to know whether the equation $$1 = 2 - \frac{1}{2 - \frac{1}{2 - \cdots}}$$ is true or not. It can be shown easily that if the continued fraction converges, it cannot converge to anything else than 1. It seems that if the continued fraction converges, the convergence is very slow. The apparent slowness of the convergence makes it difficult to estimate the presence of true convergence numerically. At the moment I don't know whether this converges or not.
Back
Top