Social Security numbers are of the form XYZ - MN - ABCD
Part A:
The first three digits XYZ are referred to as the area number
X is a number 1 - 7 (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7)
That means we have 7 choices for X
Y and Z can be any number 0 - 9 (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9)
That means we have 10 choices for Y and also 10 choices for Z
So, the number of possible ways are
[tex]7\times10\times10=700[/tex]But we know that the area code 666 has never been used.
So we need to subtract this one from the total.
[tex]700-1=699[/tex]Therefore, the total number of possible area codes is 699.