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jmc

counting and probability intermediate

Problem

The positive five-digit integers that use each of the digits 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 exactly once are ordered from least to greatest. What is the integer in the list?
Solution
We start with the numbers that start with 1. There are 4 ways to pick the next digit, then 3 ways to pick the third digit, 2 ways to pick the fourth, and 1 to pick the last. Therefore, there are integers with 1 as the first digit. Similarly, another 24 have 2 as the first digit. That's 48 numbers so far, so we want the second smallest number that starts with 3. The smallest is 31245, and the next smallest is .
Final answer
31254