Combinations and permutations with groups of objects

combinationscombinatoricspermutationsprobability

I'm having trouble with this problem, I know that if they were distinguishable it would simply be $14!$, but I don't know how to approach the problem if there are groups of indistinguishable objects.

A boy has $6$ red, $4$ yellow, and $4$ green marbles. In how many ways can the boy arrange the marbles in a line if the the order of same color marbles doesn't matter?

Best Answer

There are a total of 14! ways in which to arrange 14 marbles. However in this context, we would be overcounting. To see this we know there are 6! ways to arrange 6 red marbles. Similarly there are 4! ways to arrange the yellow marbles and 4! ways to arrange the green marbles. So we have over counted by a factor of 6!4!4!, as order of the positioning of marbles of the same color does not matter.