Bunuel
In a tournament, there are 43 junior level and 51 senior level participants. Each pair of juniors play one match. Each pair of seniors play one match. There is no junior versus senior match. The number of girl versus girl matches in junior level is 153, while the number of boy versus boy matches in senior level is 276. What is the number of matches a boy plays against a girl ?
A. 450
B. 468
C. 998
D. 1098
E. 1208
Are You Up For the Challenge: 700 Level QuestionsJot down what they're telling you:
43 juniors = ?? boys/girls
51 seniors = ?? boys/girls
each pair j plays 1 match
each pair s plays 1 match
j: girl vs girl = 153
s: boy vs boy = 276
Total girl vs boy matches?
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I have two thoughts at this point. One, it seems like I don't have much information to work with. But this is a Problem Solving question, so there HAS to be enough info to narrow it down to one correct answer! Two, what I'd really like to know is the number of girls and boys in each grade. If I did that, I think I could figure out the number of girl vs boy matches, because everybody plays against everybody else.
Okay, let's start with the juniors. I should be able to work with just the juniors first, and then with just the seniors, because the grades never play against each other. So really I'm solving two separate problems, and then just adding the results together at the end.
For just juniors, there are 153 girl vs girl matches. There are 43 students in total.
Because every student plays every other student, every girl must play every other girl at some point. So the number of matches is the same as the number of unique pairs of junior girls.
How many unique pairs are there in a set of people? Well, there's a formula! Suppose the number of junior girls is "g". Then, the number of different pairs of girls would be g(g-1)/2.
Now we have an equation: 153 = g(g-1)/2.
Solve it:
306 = g(g-1)
There are two different ways to tackle this. I could factor it out and then solve the quadratic. Or, I could guess and check and try to come up with some numbers that fit. 306 is a bit bigger than 15^2, which is 225, and a bit smaller than 20^2, which is 400. My numbers should be something between 15 and 20.
16*(16-1) = 16*15 = 4*60 = 240: too small
17*(17-1) = 17*16 = 272: too small
18*(18-1) = 18*17 = 306: perfect.
The number of girls in the junior class is 18. Therefore,
the number of boys in the junior class is 43-18 = 25.
Let's figure out the senior class exactly the same way:
(b)(b-1)/2 = 276
b(b-1) = 552
Testing numbers between 20 and 25, since 20^2 = 400 and 25^2 = 625:
21(21-1) = 21(20) = 420: way too small
24(24-1) = 24(23) = 552: perfect!
The number of boys in the senior class is 24. Therefore,
the number of girls in the senior class is 51-24 = 27.
Let's draw a chart:
junior girls = 18
junior boys = 25
senior girls = 27
senior boys = 24
The final step is to figure out how many boy vs girl matches there are in each class.
In the junior class, the number of ways to match 1 girl to 1 boy is 18*25.
In the senior class, it's 27*24.
I really don't want to do the math, so let's look at the answer choices and see if I can estimate or eliminate:
A. 450
B. 468
C. 998
D. 1098
E. 1208
My first though is that since both values I'm adding are multiples of 3, the answer has to be a multiple of 3. Eliminate anything that isn't a multiple of 3:
A. 450
B. 468
C. 998D. 1098
E. 1208Also, 18*25 is close to 20*20, which is 400. Since the matches for the juniors are already about 400, and I haven't even added the matches for the seniors yet, the right answer must be much bigger than 400.
So, the right answer has to be
D. 1098.. (You can confirm this by doing the multiplication yourself now, but please don't do that on test day!)