Joshua chooses five distinct numbers. In how many different ways can he assign these numbers to the variables , and so that , and ?
Solution
Suppose that the five distinct numbers that Joshua chooses are , and that . We want to assign these to so that and and and . First, we note that must be the largest of . This is because and , and because and , we get and , so and . Since is the largest, then must be . Now neither nor can be the second largest of the numbers (which is ), since and are both smaller than and . Therefore, there are two cases: or . Case 1: We have and . This leaves (which satisfy ) to be assigned to , s (which satisfy and ). Since is the largest of and is the largest of , then . This leaves to be assigned to . Since there is no known relationship between and , then there are 2 possibilities: either and , or and . Therefore, if , there are 2 possible ways to assign the numbers. Case 2: We have and . This leaves (which satisfy ) to be assigned to . There is no known relationship between . Therefore, there are 3 ways to assign one of to . For each of these 3 ways, there are 2 ways of assigning one of the two remaining numbers to . For each of these ways, there is only 1 choice for the number assigned to . Overall, this gives ways to do this assignment. Therefore, if , there are 6 possible ways to assign the numbers. Having examined the two possibilities, there are different ways to assign the numbers.