Video Transcript
A cafe offers a choice of 20 meals and nine beverages. In how many different ways can a person choose a meal and a beverage?
We need to work out the total number of different combinations of a meal and a beverage that a person can choose. We can do this by recalling the fundamental counting principle. This tells us that if we have two independent events 𝐴 and 𝐵 such that the number of possible outcomes for event 𝐴 is 𝑥 and the number of possible outcomes for event 𝐵 is 𝑦, then the total number of distinct possible outcomes of these two events together is the product 𝑥 times 𝑦.
In this question, the cafe offers a choice of 20 meals and nine beverages. So there are 20 possible outcomes for their choice of meal and nine possible outcomes for the choice of beverage. The total number of possible outcomes of these two events together then is the product 20 multiplied by nine, which is equal to 180. So the number of different ways a person can choose a meal and a beverage in this cafe is 180.