There are 10 people in a room. If each person shakes hands with exactly 3 other people, what is the total number of handshakes?

A) 15
B) 30
C) 45
D) 60
E) 120

Here's an approach that doesn't require any counting techniques:

Each person shakes hands with exactly 3 other people
So, we have 10 people and each experiences 3 handshakes for a total of 30 handshakes.

IMPORTANT: at this point, we need to recognize that every handshake has been counted TWICE. For example, if Person A and Person B shake hands, then Person A counts it as a handshake, AND Person B also counts it as a handshake. Of course only one handshake occurred.

To account for the DUPLICATION, we'll divide 30 by 2 to get 15

Answer: A

Here's a similar question: https://www.beatthegmat.com/count-questions-t274369.html

Cheers,
Brent

Hi akhilsuhag,

Since the answer choices are so "spread out", there's an interesting way to get to the correct answer by avoiding complex math and using "brute force" and a comparison:

We're told that there are 10 people in the room and that each person shakes hands with 3 other people.

Let's say there were 4 people, who we'll call A, B, C and D.

The handshakes would be:
AB
AC
AD
BC
BD
CD

In this situation, each person shook hands with 3 people and there was a total of 6 handshakes.

If we TRIPLED the number of people, then we'd have 12 people, and we'd have TRIPLE the handshakes: 6 x 3 = 18.

Since we have FEWER than 12 people, we'll have FEWER than 18 handshakes. There's only one answer that fits:

Final Answer: A

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich