If girls and boys go to two places to participate in volunteer activities, and both places require both girls and boys, then there are ______ different distribution plans.
Solution
To solve this problem, let's break it down into clear, step-by-step calculations:
Step 1: Arrange the boys. Since both places require boys, each boy must go to a different place. There are ways to arrange the boys, which is calculated as follows:
Step 2: Arrange the girls, considering that they must be split between two places. There are two scenarios for dividing the girls:
- Scenario 1: Divide the girls into two groups, with one group having girl and the other having girls. The number of ways to select girl from is calculated using combinations:
- Scenario 2: Divide the girls into two groups, with one group having girls and the other having girls. The number of ways to select girls from is:
Adding the ways from both scenarios for the girls gives us a total of ways to split the girls.
Step 3: Combining the arrangements of boys and girls. Since the boys can be arranged in ways and the girls can be arranged in ways (the sum from both scenarios), the total number of ways to distribute the girls and boys to two places is:
However, we need to account for the fact that there are places, which has already been implicitly considered in our approach for both boys and girls. Therefore, we don't multiply by 2 again at the end as the initial solution implied; the correct total number of distribution plans is directly the result of our calculation:
Therefore, the correct answer, accounting for the detailed steps and correcting the multiplication error in the final step of the provided solution, is .