Question

There are 100 runners entered in a marathon. How many different groups of three runners can finish in first, second, and third? Does this problem involve permutations or combinations?

Answer 1

Any one of the runners could be 1st.
Every runner except for the one that was 1st could be 2nd.
Every runner that wasn't 1st or 2nd could be 3rd.

100*99*98=970200 groups.
This involves permutations because order does matter.

Hope this helps!