There are 17 people in an office with 5 different phone lines. if all the lines begin to ring at once, how many groups of 5 people can answer these lines?

6188 different combinations of people

Step-by-step explanation:

This is a combination problem since it does not matter the order of people that answer the phones.  The combination looks like this:

₁₇C₅ =

This expands to

The 12! cancels out in the top and bottom so the remaining multiplication leaves you with

₁₇C₅ =

which divides to 6188

answer: yes, since the line has a steeper rate of change than the exponential the y-values will be greater and they will only intersect one time.