2015 AIME I Problems/Problem 2
Contents
[hide]Problem
The nine delegates to the Economic Cooperation Conference include officials from Mexico, officials from Canada, and officials from the United States. During the opening session, three of the delegates fall asleep. Assuming that the three sleepers were determined randomly, the probability that exactly two of the sleepers are from the same country is , where and are relatively prime positive integers. Find .
Video Solution For Problems 1-3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HAk-6qlOH0
Video Solution by OmegaLearn
https://youtu.be/IRyWOZQMTV8?t=1802
~ pi_is_3.14
Solution 1 (Principle of Inclusion and Exclusion)
One of the best ways to solve this problem is to use PIE, or the Principle of Inclusion and Exclusion.
To start off, we know that the denominator, or the total ways to pick officials, is . Now, we find the number of ways that at least officials are from the same country and then subtract the number of ways all officials are from the same country. To start with at least officials, we know:
- There are different ways to pick delegates such that are from Mexico, simply because there are "extra" delegates to choose to be the third sleeper once both from Mexico are sleeping.
- There are ways to pick from Canada, as we choose of the Canadians () and then there are other options for the third sleeper.
- Lastly, there are ways to choose for the United States. We can choose two American officials with . Then, there are options for the third sleeper.
Now, we want to find the number of ways to have three sleepers from the same country.
- There are no ways for the sleepers to be from Mexico because there are only Mexican officials. Hence, we get ways.
- There is only way to pick all from Canada because there are exactly Canadian officials. We now consider the number of times we originally counted this, which after inspection, is , so we have .
- Lastly, there are ways to choose all officials from the United States (). Once again, we counted this times, so we have .
Thus, the fraction is , and our answer is .
Note: Similar to Solution 2, we could also have grouped each of the countries in terms of the ways we have for at least officials to sleep and for all to sleep. Mexico would have ways for exactly 2 officials to be there, Canada with ways, and the United States with ways.
Solution by: armang32324
Solution 2
The total number of ways to pick officials from total is , which will be our denominator. Now we can consider the number of ways for exactly two sleepers to be from the same country for each country individually and add them to find our numerator:
- There are different ways to pick delegates such that are from Mexico, simply because there are "extra" delegates to choose to be the third sleeper once both from Mexico are sleeping.
- There are ways to pick from Canada, as each Canadian can be left out once and each time one is left out there are "extra" people to select one more sleeper from.
- Lastly, there are ways to choose for the United States. It is easy to count different ways to pick of the Americans, and each time you do there are officials left over to choose from.
Thus, the fraction is . Since this does not reduce, the answer is .
Solution 3
Like in the solution above, there are ways to pick delegates. We can use casework to find the probability that there aren't exactly sleepers from a county, then subtract from .
- If no country has at least delegates sleeping, then every country must have delegate sleeping. There are ways for this to happen.
- If all sleeping delegates are from Canada, there are way.
- If all are from the US, there are ways.
So, the probability that there are not exactly sleepers from one country is , and the probability that exactly are from the same country is Our answer is .
See also
2015 AIME I (Problems • Answer Key • Resources) | ||
Preceded by Problem 1 |
Followed by Problem 3 | |
1 • 2 • 3 • 4 • 5 • 6 • 7 • 8 • 9 • 10 • 11 • 12 • 13 • 14 • 15 | ||
All AIME Problems and Solutions |
The problems on this page are copyrighted by the Mathematical Association of America's American Mathematics Competitions.