There are situations when some cases cannot occur at the same time.
For example, while tossing a coin, it cannot fall heads AND tails at the same time. These cases are called mutually exclusive cases.
If there are only r possible mutually exclusive cases for which a selection can happen,
and if there are n1 choices in the first case,
n2 choices in the second case,
and so on, until the ‘n r’ choices in the r-th case,
then the total number of choices for the selection will be n1, plus n2, all the way until plus ‘n r’
This is called the Addition Principle.
Most of the counting problems that we will encounter will be based on the addition and multiplication principle. In solving counting problems, we should consider what the possible cases are or what the procedure for the selection to take place is.
Let us work on an example together.