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yrozenblum
Attachment:
Table.png

The chart above shows political and geographic data on a certain legislative committee of 20 members, each of whom belongs to 1 of 2 political parties and lives in 1 of 4 regions. How many subcommittees of this legislative committee are possible that contain exactly 1 member from each of the 4 regions and the same number of members from each of the 2 political parties?

A. 10
B. 20
C. 99
D.246
E. 495

A few points to note:

  • We need the same number of members from each of the 2 political parties. Hence, out of the four members, we need two members of party A and two members of party B.
  • We don't have any members of Party B in the West region. Hence, the member selected from the western region will belong to Party A.
  • So, we need to select only one member of party A who can be either from the North, South, or East region. Once, the region of the member from Party A is identified, the remaining two regions will have the member from Party B.
    For example, if the member from the north region belongs to Party A, then, the members from the remaining two regions i.e. South and East must belong to Party B

Hence, we can have the following combinations

  1. (West → Party A & North → Party A) (East → Party B & South → Party B)
  2. (West → Party A & South→ Party A) (East → Party B & North → Party B)
  3. (West → Party A & East → Party A) (North→ Party B & South → Party B)

Required combinations

  1. (West → Party A & North → Party A) (East → Party B & South → Party B) = \(^3C_1 * ^5C_1 * ^3C_1 * ^4C_1 = 180\)
  2. (West → Party A & South→ Party A) (East → Party B & North → Party B) = \(^3C_1 * ^1C_1 * ^3C_1 * ^2C_1 = 18\)
  3. (West → Party A & East → Party A) (North→ Party B & South → Party B) = \(^3C_1 * ^2C_1 * ^4C_1 * ^2C_1 = 48\)

Total possible combinations = 180 + 18 + 48 = 246

Option D
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­Write out the possible combinations of regions for each party and then put the numbers in. Light work:

­
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yrozenblum


The chart above shows political and geographic data on a certain legislative committee of 20 members, each of whom belongs to 1 of 2 political parties and lives in 1 of 4 regions. How many subcommittees of this legislative committee are possible that contain exactly 1 member from each of the 4 regions and the same number of members from each of the 2 political parties?

A. 10
B. 20
C. 99
D. 246
E. 495


Attachment:
The attachment 2023-12-05_20-53-06.png is no longer available
Attachment:
The attachment 2023-12-05_20-52-23.png is no longer available
­
A quick tree diagram will help here. They can be quite useful.
Note that West has only 3 Party A people (0 party B people)  so 1 of those must be selected. This gives us 3 ways.
Next, go to South - either 1 of Party A or 1 of the 4 party B can be selected. 

If party A is selected from South, then from north and east, party B candidates have to be selected and so on...

Attachment:
Screenshot 2024-06-22 at 4.37.43 PM.png
Screenshot 2024-06-22 at 4.37.43 PM.png [ 58.76 KiB | Viewed 21988 times ]

Total possible subcommittees = 18   + 48   + 180 = 246

Answer (D)
 ­
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As we have no overlaps, neither in the party affiliation nor the area that they live in, each individual lives in exactly one location and belongs to exactly one party. We see that if we add together party A and B to get 20 or all 4 regions are equal to 20. As we are asked, how many subcommittees of this legislative committee are possible that contain exactly 1 member from each of the 4 regions and the SAME (equal) number of members from each of the 2 political parties, we need to account for all possibilities. So what does this question mean? We need to have each region present. However, we have a constraint: the same number of members from each party, meaning we need 2 from each. So one of our possible combination could look something like this: 5C1*1C1*0C1*3C1. However, the constraints of the task don't actually allow us to do this as then we wouldn't have 4 people in total. As in party B not all regions are available, we best start with party B and provide 3C2 possible combinations for party B (3) instead of 4C2 (6) if all regions were filled. Now, if we choose 2 regions in party B, we need to choose the not chosen 2 for party A. So our combinations are (leaving out combination notation as xC1=x): 2*4*3*2+2*3*1*3+4*3*5*3=246­
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what a hard Qn is this! Firstly the language & secondly the method
Doing it under time pressure is a big thing!!!
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