Suppose that you write an investment newsletter. You track 12 stocks, and you classify these stocks into equal-sized categories of buy, sell, and hold. How many different ways can you classify these stocks into those categories?
Click on the arrows to vote for the correct answer
A. B. C. D.D
To answer this question, we need the formula for permutations that takes into account different ways to label things. The number of ways that you can arrange n objects so that there are n_1 of one kind, n_2 of another kind, and so on, up to n_k of a kth kind, is found by using the multinomial formula: n! /[(n_1)! * (n_2)! * ... *
(n_k)!]. In this case, your equally-sized categories will be 4 of each kind, 12 in all. 12! / (4!*4!*4!) = 34,650.