An employer has 6 applicants for a programming position and 4 applicants for a manager position. If the employer must hire 3 programmers and 2 managers, what is the total number of ways the employer can make the selection?
a) 1,490
b) 132
c) 120
d) 60
e) 23
The OA is C.
Please, can any expert explain this PS question for me? I have many difficulties to understand why that is the correct answer. Thanks.
An employer has 6 applicants for a programming...
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Take the task of selecting employees and break it into stages.swerve wrote:An employer has 6 applicants for a programming position and 4 applicants for a manager position. If the employer must hire 3 programmers and 2 managers, what is the total number of ways the employer can make the selection?
a) 1,490
b) 132
c) 120
d) 60
e) 23
Stage 1: Select 3 programmers to hire
Since the order in which we select the programmers does not matter, we can use combinations.
We can select 3 programmers from 6 programmers in 6C3 ways (20 ways)
So, we can complete stage 1 in 20 ways
If anyone is interested, we have a free video on calculating combinations (like 6C3) in your head: https://www.gmatprepnow.com/module/gmat ... /video/775
You can also watch a demonstration of the FCP in action: https://www.gmatprepnow.com/module/gmat ... /video/776
Then you can try solving the following questions:
EASY
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MEDIUM
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DIFFICULT
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Cheers,
Brent
GMAT/MBA Expert
- Jeff@TargetTestPrep
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The programmers can be selected in 6C3 = 6!/3![(6-3)!] = (6 x 5 x 4)/3! = (6 x 5 x 4)/(3 x 2) = 20 ways.swerve wrote:An employer has 6 applicants for a programming position and 4 applicants for a manager position. If the employer must hire 3 programmers and 2 managers, what is the total number of ways the employer can make the selection?
a) 1,490
b) 132
c) 120
d) 60
e) 23
The managers can be selected in 4C2 = 4!/[2!(4-2)!] = (4 x 3)/2! = 6 ways.
Thus, the total number of ways to select the group is 20 x 6 = 120.
Answer: C
Jeffrey Miller
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