[Math] Permutations and combinations. Picking a team

combinatoricspermutations

A Football/Soccer team consists of $9$ players. $2$ wingers, $2$ midfielders, $2$ strikers and three defenders. (yes I know there's no Goalkeeper.)
The coach has $11$ wingers available to him, $7$ midfielders, $5$ strikers and $9$ defenders.
How many ways can the team be selected?
I know to pick the wingers there are
$$ \frac{11!}{2!(11-2)!} \text{ways} $$
And the same goes for the rest of the positions
But how do i find the total number of ways to pick the entire team? Do I just sum them all?
Thanks in advance

Best Answer

You want to combine all possibilities into one big team arrangement. All selections (winger, midflier...) are independant one from another, so you should multiply them : the answer to your problem is ${11 \choose 2}\times{7 \choose 2}\times{5 \choose 2}\times{9 \choose 3}$


If you want to be convinced of it, just look at this small example.
I have 2 choices for my main plate, and 3 choices for my desert. How many different menus are there?

If I pick the first main plate, I have 3 choices for desert.
If I pick the second main plate, I have 3 choices for desert.

For every choice of main plate (and there are 2 of them), I have 3 choices for desert: I actually have $2 \times 3$ choices in total. Hence, multiplication is what you're looking for.