crazypriya
Thanks for the explanation...
I was wondering how this can be solved as my solution was not matching with the answers....
Dear Crazy Priya,
First of all, did you read my post about how the formatting is incorrect in the question slide, so that what appears as "263" really should be 26^3"? That's a big different.
If you understand what the answers are supposed to say, then
(1) the correct answer for State A is \((26^2)*(9^4)*23\)
(2) the correct answer for State B is \((26^2)*(9^4)\)
If that's what you got, your correct.
If you didn't get these answers, then one would get these using the
Fundamental Counting Principle, explained in this blog article:
https://magoosh.com/gmat/2012/gmat-quant-how-to-count/If, after reading that blog, you still have questions, let me know, and I'll demonstrate a full solution for this problem.
Mike