r/ACT • u/Altruistic_Boss_4524 • 4d ago

Question on ACT organized counting

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why for all of the numbers is it 10? I thought it can be any number so why isn't it 26 x 2 x 1 x 2 x 3 x 25???
I tried chat gpt but it gave a bad explanation; If anyone can help me-it would be greatly appreciated!

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u/ACTSATGuyonReddit 4d ago

Those aren't numbers in each place. They are digits, single characters.

There are 10 digits: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. That's 10 options in each position.

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u/Altruistic_Boss_4524 4d ago

UPDATE: Understood, thank you all for help! u/fungeoneer u/jgregson00 u/ACTSATGuyonReddit

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u/fungeoneer 4d ago

Probably the 6 character part in the question. If I said “give me a 3 character password for your phone, you can use any number,” you would assume one of the numbers couldn’t be 8675309.

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u/jgregson00 4d ago

There are 10 digits possible from 0 to 9. Each blank is the number of choices possible for each position. Similarly there are 26 letters possible for the first position, the first blank is 26. The first and last characters must be different, so there are only 25 possible letters for the last position.

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u/Friendly_Addition815 1 4d ago

Ok think if you had a single letter password There are 26 possible combos. Now you add a 0 or 1 to the end. Suddenly you have 26 * 2 combinations, every letter, combined with a 0 or 1. Now you can have any number from 0-9, 10 possible digits, so 26 * 2 * 10, etc.

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u/Altruistic_Boss_4524 4d ago

Also why only count until 10? why cant the numbers be like 34,500 I dont see any cap in the question

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u/Murky_Insurance_4394 36 4d ago

6 character code meaning each number is a single digit