Hi, EmpowerGMATRich,

I do have a query regarding no. of ways to arrange I's together (I1 and I2). Why can not we write 4! * 2! as we can also arrange identical I's in two ways and that will give the option A (60-48 = 12).

Regards,
Raxit.

Hi Raxit85,

You bring up a good question. Although the prompt does not explicitly state it, we are meant to assume that the two "I"s are identical. In simple terms, if you had just two letters (re: the two "I"s), then you could form just ONE distinct 'word': II (not two words - again, because the two "I"s are identical).

IF... the prompt did not want us to think in those terms, then we wouldn't have duplicate letters at all - it would just be 5 different letters and the question would ask something to the effect of "how many different ways are there to arrange the letters A, B, C, D and E so that there is at least one letter between the A and the B?"

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich
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The letters D, G, I, I , and T can be used to form 5-letter strings as DIGIT or DGIIT. Using these letters, how many 5-letter strings can be formed in which the two occurrences of the letter I are separated by at least one other letter?

A) 12
B) 18
C) 24
D) 36
E) 48

An easy way to layout this problem:

All the possible DIFFERENT combinations - the impermissible combinations = the total permissible combinations.

For instance, to find all the different combinations, create a fraction where the numerator is the factorial number of digits (5!) and the denominator is factorial the number of repeats (2!). We divide this by the factorial of the number of repeats because there are two Is, let's say we have I1 and I2. If two possible codes are I1I2DGT or I2I1DGT, it doesn't matter which order the I's are in, the code is still IIDGT. Thus, we must divide by this factorial because if we don't, we would have double the actual amount of codes.

So now we have all of the different combinations as (5!/2!), which equations to (5*4*3*2!/2!), which gives us 60 total combinations.

Now, we need to find the amount of impermissible combinations, because two I'ss cant be next to each other. Think of the two I's as one "block": it doesn't matter which I comes first, they just can't be next to eachother. So we have 4 different combinations of impermisslbe numbers:

II D G T
D II G T
D G II T
D G T II

We've already accounted for the different combinations that the D, G, and T can be moved around to form different codes in the first (ALL) part of the equation. We are simply looking for how many ways the II block can be next to each other, so we can subtract it from the ALL part of the equation. This gives us 4! ways that the blocks can be next to eachother, which equals (4*3*2*1) = 24.

Now, we need to take the total amount of combinations (60) and subtract the impermissible combinations where the two Is are next to each other (24).

So our answer is 60 - 24 = 36.

Hope this helps.

Hi,
Could you please explain why the below method is incorrect as I could not find by mistake

- If the 2 I's are separated by 1 letter
3! * 4C2 because there are 4 gaps between D, G and I = 36

- If the 2 I's are separated by 2 letters
3! * 3C2 because now there are 3 gaps. = 18

- If the 2 I's are separated by 3 letters
3! = 6

Total = 60.

Hi aarushisingla,

Based on your approach, it does not look like you are properly accounting for 'duplicate' entries.

For example:
D - (first I) - G - (second I) - T

and

D - (second I) - G - (first I) - T

are the SAME result, so you are not supposed to count it twice (just once).

I'm going to approach the first part of your calculation in a different way - and then you can try to complete the overall calculation on your own:

- If the 2 I's are separated by 1 letter

There are only three possible placements for the two Is:

I _ I _ _
_ I _ I _
_ _ I _ I

You can arrange the remaining 3 letters (the D, G and T) in each option in 3! = 6 ways. So the total number of ways to have the two Is separated by just 1 space is 3(3!) = 18.

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich
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Bunuel chetan2u generis VeritasKarishma

Why don't we divide 4! by 2! while we are calculating the number of cases with the 2 "I(s)" together just the way we did while calculating the total arrangements?

Thanks!

Hi,

There are total 5 letters, out of which 2 are same. So ways = 5!/2!=60, but this also includes when 2 Is are together.

So, we have to subtract the cases when two Is are together => For this take 2Is as 1 letter, That is D, (II), G and T.
And 4 letters can be arranged in 4! or 24 ways

Our answer = 60-24=36

ScottTargetTestPrep, why is it that the Is together is 4! = 24 instead of 4! * 2! = 48?? Don't the boxes of [4] [ii] [2] [1] need to be multiplied by 2! to account for the different orders of the Is?

Response:

If we were trying to find the number of arrangements of the letters D, I, G, I, and T, in which the letters G and T were together - in other words, if we were calculating the number of arrangements of [D] [I] [I] [G-T] - then you would be 100% correct that we would multiply the number of arrangements of these four items (two of which are indistinguishable) by 2! because [G-T] could appear as G-T or T-G. However, when we are arranging [I - I] [D] [G] [T], we should not multiply by 2!. There is no way to arrange I - I other than I - I because the two Is are identical.
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Hey Scott, why is it not 4!/2! because two 'I's are also repeating?

Response:

It’s because here we are considering [I-I] as one single item instead of two items. Again, you can look at all 4 brackets ([I-I], [D], [G] and [T]) — they are all different. If two of these items were identical (for example, [I-I], [D], [G] and [I-I]), then we would indeed have to divide 4! by 2!; however, here, we don’t have two of these items that are identical.
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Solution:

Total ways to arrange the letters of the word D,I,G,I,T =5!/2! =60

Number of ways the I's can be together =4! ways =24

Number of ways in which the I's are not together or in other words there is a letter b/w them

=60-24

=36 (option d)

Devmitra Sen
GMAT SME
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Hi ScottTargetTestPrep:

How come we aren't doing this:

4! x 2?

Since I can be ordered
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