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 , where is the number of units. In this case, , so there are ways to arrange the units.
Within each unit, the students can also be arranged. For the first school (3 students), there are arrangements. For the second school (2 students), there are 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 .
The total number of ways to arrange the 6 students regardless of school is .
Therefore, the probability of same-school students standing together is given by the classical probability formula, .