Carcass wrote:
The 23 members of a high school debate club will be split up into two groups -- a 7-member traveling team and a 16-member home team. Every person in the debate club will be on either the traveling team or the home team, but not both.
Quantity A |
Quantity B |
The total number of different possible traveling teams that could be chosen |
The total number of different possible home teams that could be chosen |
A)The quantity in Column A is greater.
B)The quantity in Column B is greater.
C)The two quantities are equal.
D)The relationship cannot be determined from the information given.
Quantity A: We need to select 7 students (from 23 students) to be on the travelling team. We can accomplish this in 23C7 ways
Quantity B: We need to select 16 students (from 23 students) to be on the home team. We can accomplish this in 23C16 ways
IMPORTANT: Notice that, when it comes to selecting those 16 students, we can accomplish the task in two ways.
Option #1: We can select 16 of the 23 students to be on the home team (= 23C16).
Option #2: We can select 7 of the 23 students to NOT be on the home team, which means the remaining 16 students WILL be on the home team (= 23C7).
Since both options will yield the same result, we can conclude that 23C16 = 23C7
Answer: C
Key combinations property: nCr = nC(n-r)Some examples:
10C7 = 10C3
8C1 = 8C7
11C6 = 11C5
Cheers,
Brent