Problem of the Week
for the week of February 27, 2006

The Judge Problem

On July 1, 2002 Paul Martinek, publisher of Lawyers Weekly USA, was a guest on the national television news and interview show The O'Reilly Factor.   The topic was the ruling by the Ninth Circuit Court in California.   The court held that requiring sudents in public schools to recite the Pledge of Allegiance is unconstitutional because it contains the phrase "under God."

The panel that issued the ruling consisted of three judges, chosen at random from the larger number in the Ninth Circuit.   Martinek commented, "Because there are 45 judges in the Ninth Circuit, there are 3,000 different combinations of three-judge panels."

Mr. Martinek's math is a little rusty.   Help him out by answering the following questions:
(1) If a three-judge panel is to be chosen from a pool of forty-five judges, how many different panels are possible?
(2) How many judges would have to be in the Ninth Circuit for the statement that "there are 3,000 different combinations of three-judge panels" to be correct?


Send your solution by Friday 4:00 PM to:
David Pleacher

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