2016 AMC 10B Problems/Problem 22
Contents
Problem
A set of teams held a round-robin tournament in which every team played every other team exactly once. Every team won games and lost games; there were no ties. How many sets of three teams were there in which beat , beat , and beat
Solution
There are teams. Any of the sets of three teams must either be a fork (in which one team beat both the others) or a cycle:
But we know that every team beat exactly other teams, so for each possible at the head of a fork, there are always exactly choices for and . Therefore there are forks, and all the rest must be cycles.
Thus the answer is which is .
Solution 2
Since there are teams and for each set of three teams there is a cycle, there are a total of cycles of three teams. Because about of the cycles satisfy the conditions of the problems, our answer is close to . Looking at the answer choices, we find that is closer to than any other answer choices, so our answer is which is .
See Also
2016 AMC 10B (Problems • Answer Key • Resources) | ||
Preceded by Problem 21 |
Followed by Problem 23 | |
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All AMC 10 Problems and Solutions |
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