Maths Olympiad Prep

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Combinatorics Difficulty 3.9 AMC 10/12 Find the answer United States

In how many ways can 6 juniors and 6 seniors form 3 disjoint teams of 4 people so that each team has 2 juniors and 2 seniors?

Pick one

Solution

Select the first junior and call this person AA. There are 5 other juniors and (62)=15\binom{6}{2} = 15 pairs of seniors who could team up with AA. Select the next junior not yet on a team, say BB. There are 3 other juniors and (42)=6\binom{4}{2} = 6 pairs of seniors who could team up with BB. The third team consists of the people not yet chosen. Thus there are 51536=13505 \cdot 15 \cdot 3 \cdot 6 = 1350 ways to form the teams.

There are (62,2,2)=6!2!2!2!=90\binom{6}{2,2,2} = \frac{6!}{2!2!2!} = 90 ways to assign the seniors to teams 1, 2, and 3, and, similarly, 90 ways to assign juniors to those teams. But there are 3!=63! = 6 ways for the three teams to be ordered, so the number of ways to form the teams is 90906=1350\frac{90 \cdot 90}{6} = 1350.

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Source: MathNet, licensed CC-BY-4.0. Statement reproduced verbatim; metadata (topic, difficulty) added by this project.