This is more than just an example of how we can use the multiplicative principle in a particular counting question. What we have here is a general interpretation of certain applications of the multiplicative principle using rigorously defined mathematical objects: functions. Whenever we have a counting question that asks for the number of outcomes of a repeated event, we can interpret that as asking for the number of functions from \(\{1,2,\ldots, n\}\) (where \(n\) is the number of times the event is repeated) to \(\{1,2,\ldots,k\}\) (where \(k\) is the number of ways that event can occur).
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