Problem Solving

M7MBA wrote:A woman has seven cookies - four chocolate chip and three oatmeal. She gives one cookie to each of her six children: Nicole, Ronit, Kim, Deborah, Mark, and Terrance. If Deborah will only eat the kind of cookie that Kim eats, in how many different ways can the cookies be distributed?

(A) 5040
(B) 50
(C) 25
(D) 15
(E) 12

[spoiler]OA=D[/spoiler]

Source: Manhattan GMAT

We can denote each child by the first letter of his or her name.

We have 2 scenarios: 1) D and K both have chocolate chip cookies, and 2) D and K both have oatmeal cookies.

Scenario 1:

After D and K have 2 chocolate chip cookies, the woman has 2 chocolate chip (c) and 3 oatmeal (o) cookies for the remaining 4 children. She can distribute the cookies to N-R-M-T as follows:

c-c-o-o (and 2 c's and 2 o's can be arranged in 4!/(2!2!) = 24/(2 x 2) = 6 ways)

c-o-o-o (and 1 c and 3 o's can be arranged in 4!/3! = 24/6 = 4 ways)

We see that there are 10 ways to distribute the cookies in this scenario.

Scenario 2:

After D and K have 2 oatmeal cookies, the woman has 4 chocolate chip (c) and 1 oatmeal (o) cookies for the remaining 4 children. She can distribute the cookies to N-R-M-T as follows:

c-c-c-c (and the 4 c's can be arranged in only 1 way)

c-c-c-o (and 3 c's and 1 o can be arranged in 4!/3! = 24/6 = 4 ways)

We see that there are 5 ways to distribute the cookies in this scenario.

Therefore, the woman has 10 + 5 = 15 ways to distribute the 7 cookies to 6 children.

Answer: D