Hi Gil,

Think about walking down the cafeteria offerings and selecting your meal. At the entree station there are 2 items so you have 2 choices of which to select. Next you come to the fruit station. There are 3 fruits available and regardless of the entree you selected you can choose one of the fruits. Thus at this point you have $2 \times 3$ possible partial meals. Next comes the drinks station. Again there are 3 possible selection and regardless of what you have on your tray so far you have three choices of a drink and hence there are $2 \times 3 \times 3$ possible partial meals at this point.

Finally you come to the vegetable station. This time there are 4 vegetables available and you can choose any 2 of them. How many ways are there of choosing 2 things from 4 things? Multiply this number of choices by the number of possible partial meals you have at this point to obtain the number of possible meal trays.

Penny