Video Transcript
Two spinners are spun. The first spinner is numbered
from one to five, and the second spinner is numbered from one to seven. Determine the total number of
possible outcomes.
To answer this question, we’re
going to recall the fundamental counting principle. This says that if A and B are
independent events, that is, the outcome of one does not affect the outcome of
the other and if A has 𝑚 possible outcomes and B has 𝑛 possible outcomes, the
total number of possible outcomes of the two events together is 𝑚 times 𝑛;
it’s the product of these.
Now, our two events are
spinning the first spinner and spinning the second spinner. And so, we need to consider the
total number of outcomes for each event. The first spinner is numbered
from one to five, so there are five different scores that we can receive when we
spin that first spinner. Then the second spinner is
numbered from one to seven. So, there are seven different
outcomes; there are seven different scores that we could get. The product rule for counting
or the counting principle says that the total number of possible outcomes is the
product of these two numbers. It’s five times seven and of
course that is equal to 35. And this means that when we
spin these two spinners, we can get a total number of 35 possible outcomes.
