Question

Prestige Builders has a development of new homes. There are four different floor plans, seven exterior colors, and an option of either a two-car or a three-car garage. How many choices are there for one home?

Answer 1

`4 xx 2 xx 7 = 56` total options

Explanation:

We have three different options for a given home and each has a number of choices. Let's break this down a bit to see where we end up.

We have 4 floor plans (FP) and 2 options for a garage (G). If those were our only two options, we have as the total of our options:

FP1, G1
FP1, G2
FP2, G1
FP2, G2
etc...

and eventually we'll have 8 options. Seen another way, we can take the 4 FP options and multiply it by the 2 G options to get 8 total options.

So now let's take them all into account. We have not just the 4 FP and 2 G options but we also have 7 colours (C). We can find the total options by multiplying through:

`FP xx G xx C = "total options"`

`4 xx 2 xx 7 = 56` total options