[Del]

I am trying to figure something out to satisfy my own curiosity but unfortunately I suck at math and don't know how to approach this.

I am trying to figure out how many possible combinations I can generate given some data in drop-down menus on a web page.

Scenario:

I have three drop-down menus, each with a different number of text options.

Dropdown A: 10 items
Dropdown B: 24 items
Dropdown C: 14 items

The tricky part is that the results will always be a combination of A+C, or B+C, never A+B+C, and never A+B.

Does anyone know how I can solve this? If it's possible to do it in Excel, that would be excellent.

 

[Mike B.]

Well you're A+C combo will result in 140 possible combinations and the B+C 336 combinations.

My math is rusty and I may not fully understand the issue but there you have it. If you were just looking for unique permutations of the 10 "A" items then you have to bust out the factorial.

 

[Del]

Well dang. I was hoping it would be some sort of astronomical number.

Thanks for helping

 

[Mike B.]

You're probably thinking permutations if you want astronomical. Let's say you have your 10 "A" items you want to arrange in unique sequences.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10
2, 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10
Etc. then you have 10! = 3,628,800 unique sequences