A social security number consists of nine digits. How many different social security numbers are possible if repetition of digits is permitted?

Oh goodness, I'm not sure what number to start with :(

in each position you could place 9 different digits.

So the total number of ways = 9^9 = .....

9^9 = 387,420,489 different social security numbers are possible??

correct

okay great! thanks :)

No worries! Let's break it down step by step.

To determine the number of different social security numbers, we need to consider each digit's possibilities.

Since repetition of digits is permitted, there are 10 options (0-9) for each digit of the social security number.

Since a social security number consists of nine digits, we can use the multiplication principle to calculate the number of possibilities.

So, for each digit, there are 10 possibilities. And since there are nine digits in total, we multiply the number of possibilities for each digit together.

Therefore, the total number of different social security numbers is:

10 * 10 * 10 * 10 * 10 * 10 * 10 * 10 * 10 = 10^9 = 1,000,000,000

Hence, there are 1 billion possible social security numbers if repetition of digits is permitted.