1989 AHSME Problems/Problem 9

Revision as of 06:48, 22 October 2014 by Timneh (talk | contribs) (See also)
(diff) ← Older revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)

Problem

Mr. and Mrs. Zeta want to name their baby Zeta so that its monogram (first, middle, and last initials) will be in alphabetical order with no letter repeated. How many such monograms are possible?

$\textrm{(A)}\ 276\qquad\textrm{(B)}\ 300\qquad\textrm{(C)}\ 552\qquad\textrm{(D)}\ 600\qquad\textrm{(E)}\ 15600$

Solution

We see that for any combination of two distinct letters other than Z (as the last name will automatically be Z), there is only one possible way to arrange them in alphabetical order, thus the answer is just $\dbinom{25}{2}=\boxed{\mathrm{(B)\,300}}$.

See also

1989 AHSME (ProblemsAnswer KeyResources)
Preceded by
Problem 8
Followed by
Problem 10
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
All AHSME Problems and Solutions

The problems on this page are copyrighted by the Mathematical Association of America's American Mathematics Competitions. AMC logo.png