Skip to main content
OlympiadHQ

Browse · MATH

Print

jmc

counting and probability junior

Problem

The positive four-digit integers that use each of the four digits and exactly once are ordered from least to greatest. What is the integer in the list?
Solution
Since there are so few numbers, we could simply list each of the combinations, but let's look at a more mathematical approach which we could also apply to larger sets of numbers.

We first consider how many of the numbers start with the digit We have three more digits and to use. We can pick any of the three choices for the digit after the and then either of the remaining choices for the third number, and finally, the remaining choice for the final number. Thus there are possibilities for numbers that begin with the digit For completeness, these are:

The same reasoning can be used for numbers that begin with the digit Therefore there are numbers which begin with For completeness, these are: After this, we have found a total of of the numbers in the list of -digit integers with the digits and

We also have different numbers which can be formed with a leading This makes a total of different numbers, since we want the number, we can simply list these out in order from least to greatest, as specified in the problem.

The number is

The number is

The number is

The number is

The number is

The number is

Thus our answer is the number, or

Note that we could have stopped listing the numbers above once we got to the number.
Final answer
3214