We really don't want to have to draw this tree every time though!  What if there were 8 choices for dinner, 13 choices for entertainment and 7 choices for dessert?  Yikes!  We'd need a MUCH bigger piece of paper.  But...  I already know that there would be 728 possible dates!

Want to know how I did it?

It's a little magic... and a lot of multiplying! 

(Sorry, but I need to change my color scheme a tad here.)

                                       2 choices for dinner

                                       3 choices for entertainment

                                       2 choices for dessert

possible dates

 

                                       8 choices for dinner

                                      13 choices for entertainment

                                       7 choices for dessert

possible dates

 

So, if we had

                                       5 choices for dinner

                                       6 choices for entertainment

                                       3 choices for dessert

How many possible dates are there?

Continued on the next page