In a restaurant, there are 5 choices of starter, 8 choices of main course and 4 choices of dessert. how many different three course meals could be eaten at this restaurant? (how do you get the answer? )

So...to solve this, I make a small graph. A "T" graph with however many I need.
For this problem, there are 5 starters for I have 5 sections in my T chart. In each section, there are 8 main courses and 4 desserts.
For every main course, you have 4 options of a dessert. So, you would do 8x4 to make the amount of choices you have under that starter.
8x4= 32. So there are 32 choices under each of the 5 starters. Easily, that is 32x5( or 5x2 plus 30x5) which equals 160.
Therefore, there are 160 different choices if there are 5 starters, 8 main courses and 4 desserts.

You don't have to use a T chart or even fill it all the way in. It just helps me visualize easier.