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Question

A lock requires a 4-character password formed using digits $0 - 9$ and letters $A - F$, with no repetition. How many such passwords are possible ?

The correct answer is
43680

Calculating 4-Character Password Possibilities

The problem asks for the number of distinct 4-character passwords that can be formed using digits $0 - 9$ and letters $A - F$ without repetition.

Character Set Identification

  • Digits available: $0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9$ (10 digits)
  • Letters available: $A, B, C, D, E, F$ (6 letters)
  • Total available unique characters: $10 + 6 = 16$
  • Password length required: 4 characters
  • Constraint: No character repetition allowed

Permutation Calculation

Since the order of characters matters in a password and repetition is not allowed, this is a permutation problem. We need to find the number of permutations of selecting 4 characters from a set of 16 distinct characters.

The formula for permutations is $P(n, k) = \frac{n!}{(n-k)!}$, where $n$ is the total number of items to choose from, and $k$ is the number of items to choose.

In this case, $n = 16$ and $k = 4$.

Number of possible passwords = $P(16, 4)$

$ P(16, 4) = \frac{16!}{(16-4)!} = \frac{16!}{12!} $ $ P(16, 4) = 16 \times 15 \times 14 \times 13 $

Result

Performing the multiplication:

  • $16 \times 15 = 240$
  • $14 \times 13 = 182$
  • $240 \times 182 = 43680$

Therefore, there are 43,680 possible 4-character passwords.

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Important Questions from Permutation and Combination (Notes)

  1. In how many ways can 10 men be divided into two groups of 4 men and 6 men?
  2. How many 5-digit numbers can be formed from the digits 0, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7 and 9, using each at most once, which are divisible by 5?
  3. In how many ways can you place $N$ coins on a board with $N$ rows and $N$ columns such that every row and every column contains exactly one coin?
  4. From a group of 40 players, a cricket team of 11 players is chosen. Then, one of the eleven is chosen as the captain of the team. The total number of ways this can be done is
    [$\binom{m}{n}$ below means the number of ways $n$ objects can be chosen from $m$ objects]
  5. The maximum number of points formed by intersection of all pairs of diagonals of convex octagon is
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