Maths Olympiad Prep

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Combinatorics Difficulty 2.9 Junior Find the answer

In the 2015 High School Skills Competition, three schools had 3, 2, and 1 award-winning students respectively. These 6 students are to line up for a group photo. What is the probability that students from the same school stand together?

Pick one

Solution

First, consider the students from the first two schools as single units. This gives us three units to arrange (a group of 3 students, a group of 2 students, and 1 individual student). The number of ways to arrange these units is given by the permutation formula Ann=n!A^n_n = n!, where nn is the number of units. In this case, n=3n = 3, so there are 3!=63! = 6 ways to arrange the units.

Within each unit, the students can also be arranged. For the first school (3 students), there are A33=3!=6A^3_3 = 3! = 6 arrangements. For the second school (2 students), there are A22=2!=2A^2_2 = 2! = 2 arrangements. The individual student from the third school has only 1 arrangement.

So, the total number of ways to arrange the students with same-school students together is the product of these arrangements, which is 6×6×2×1=726 \times 6 \times 2 \times 1 = 72.

The total number of ways to arrange the 6 students regardless of school is A66=6!=720A^6_6 = 6! = 720.

Therefore, the probability of same-school students standing together is given by the classical probability formula, P=number of desired outcomestotal number of outcomes=72720=110P = \dfrac{\text{number of desired outcomes}}{\text{total number of outcomes}} = \dfrac{72}{720} = \boxed{\dfrac{1}{10}}.

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Source: NuminaMath-1.5, licensed Apache-2.0. Statement and solution reproduced as published; topic and difficulty added by this site.