Ten names are placed into a hat. In how many ways could they be pulled from the hat so they are not in alphabetical order?
+23251 There are 10! (10 factorial which is 10 x 9 x 8 x 7 x 6 x 5 x 4 x 3 x 2 x 1) ways to choose ten items.
Only one of these ways is alphabetical, all the others aren't, so there are 10! - 1 ways that are not alphabetical.
(OK, one of these ways is reverse alphabetical, so do you want to count that as alphabetical also? )
This answer assumes that no names are duplicated.
+23251 There are 10! (10 factorial which is 10 x 9 x 8 x 7 x 6 x 5 x 4 x 3 x 2 x 1) ways to choose ten items.
Only one of these ways is alphabetical, all the others aren't, so there are 10! - 1 ways that are not alphabetical.
(OK, one of these ways is reverse alphabetical, so do you want to count that as alphabetical also? )
This answer assumes that no names are duplicated.
