Maths Olympiad Prep

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Combinatorics Difficulty 3.0 AMC 10/12 Find the answer

At a gathering of 3030 people, there are 2020 people who all know each other and 1010 people who know no one. People who know each other hug, and people who do not know each other shake hands. How many handshakes occur within the group?

Pick one

Solution

Each one of the ten people has to shake hands with all the 2020 other people they don’t know. So 1020=20010\cdot20 = 200. From there, we calculate how many handshakes occurred between the people who don’t know each other. This is simply counting how many ways to choose two people to shake hands from 1010, or (102)=45\binom{10}{2} = 45. Thus the answer is 200+45=(B) 245200 + 45 = \boxed{\textbf{(B)}\ 245}.

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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.