A surgical procedure requires choosing among four alternative methodologies. The first can result in five possible outcomes, the
second can result in two possible outcomes, and the remaining methodologies can each result in four possible outcomes. What is the total number of outcomes possible?
Since each one of these methodologies are not related to one another and they do not need to be chosen in any order or consecutively then the possible outcomes would only need to be added all together to calculate the total possible outcomes. Since each outcome is independent. Therefore,
m1 = 5 outcomes
m2 = 2 outcomes
m3 = 4 outcomes
m4 = 4 outcomes
5 + 2 + 4 + 4 = 15
we can see that there are a total of 15 possible outcomes