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Catman
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Chibvike
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This can be treated like a handshake question. A handshake question a situation where there are 'n' entities and each entity is connected to '(n-1)' other entities.
Formula for a handshake question is n(n-1)/2

In this question, there a n entities = 8 and you want to connect it to n-1 other entities = 7

Therefore the result will be 8*7/2 = 28

Let's think of the appropriateness of this approach intuitively. You have 8 different appetisers from which you can select 7 other appetiser as a corresponding pair. Finally, we divide by 2 to remove duplicates
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gmatuser523
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a group of friends decide to order two appetizers from a certain menu. If the menu offers 8 different pairs of appetizers, how many different pairs of appetizers could the friends select?

This is worded confusingly. If the menu offers 8 pairs and one pair is two appetizers, does that not mean you only have 8 choices.

I was lucky enough to observe 8 couldnt be the answer and defaulted to a memorized combinatorial formula around choice but on a real exam I suppose that wouldn't save me
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