Cambridge 3 Unit HSC 10F, 16b.
We are meant to assume the ten marbles are given to us. We can't choose from colours however many we like, we assume ten marbles are given with fixed numbers of each colour. E.g. with two colours, we could be given 1 W and 9 B (White and Black), or 2 W and 8 B, etc. We need to see whether for any of these GIVEN combinations of the colours, it is possible to obtain 10000 or more different patterns. For example, with 1 W and 9 B, the number of different possible patterns is just 10. With 2 W and 8 B, it is (10!)/(2! • 8!) = 45. We can keep checking with different FIXED combinations of 2-colour sets of 10 marbles and we will see that we never get 10000 different pattern.
So we can try with a FIXED set of 3. One possibility is 3 R, 4 G, 3 B (Red, Green, Blue), etc. Then show no matter what set of 10 marbles given, if there's only 3 colours, there can never be 10000 possibilities.