. In an encyclopedia of language, the author presents five sentences that make a reasonable paragraph regardless of their order. The sentences are listed below. Mark had told him about the foxes. John looked out of the window. Could it be a fox? However, nobody had seen one for months. He thought he saw a shape in the bushes. In how many different orders can the five sentences be arranged?

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Answer:

the 1st & last paras are fixed.

that leaves 3 to be put in any order

there are 3 choices for the 1st,

2 choices left for the 2nd

and just 1 choice for the last

multiply to get

3*2*1

= 6 ways

We want to find the total number of orders in which we can order the given sentences.

We will see that there are 120 different orders.

There are 5 sentences, let's define them as:

  • s₁ = Mark had told him about the foxes.
  • s₂ = John looked out of the window.
  • s₃ = Could it be a fox?
  • s₄ = However, nobody had seen one for months.
  • s₅ = He thought he saw a shape in the bushes.

We know that we can order these in any order, so we can think of the situation as 5 empty slots, in each slot, we can put one of the previous statements.

Let's count the number of options for each one of these slots.

On the first one, we have 5 options (5 sentences)

On the second one we have 4, because we already used one on the first slot.

On the third, we have 3 options.

On the fourth, we have 2 options.

On the fifth, we have 1 option.

The total number of combinations is given by the product of these numbers of options.

Combinations = 5*4*3*2*1 = 120

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