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room

by Viper83 » Thu Jan 06, 2011 8:55 am
To furnish a room in a model home, an interior decorator is to select 2 chairs and 2 tables from a collection of chairs and tables in a warehouse that are all different from each other. If there are 5 chairs in the warehouse and if 150 different combinations are possible, how many tables are at the warehouse?

a. 6
b. 8
c. 10
d. 15
e. 30

a
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by Anurag@Gurome » Thu Jan 06, 2011 9:18 am
Viper83 wrote:To furnish a room in a model home, an interior decorator is to select 2 chairs and 2 tables from a collection of chairs and tables in a warehouse that are all different from each other. If there are 5 chairs in the warehouse and if 150 different combinations are possible, how many tables are at the warehouse?

a. 6
b. 8
c. 10
d. 15
e. 30
Say the number of tables = n

Now total number of possible combination = (Number of ways to select 2 chairs out of 5)*(Number of ways to select 2 tables out of n) = (5C2)*(nC2) = 10*(nC2)

Now, 10*(nC2) = 150
=> (nC2) = 15
=> n(n - 1)/2 = 15
=> n(n - 1) = 30

Now we can solve this quadratic n or we can go for a tricky shortcut. Note that only possible way to express 30 as a product of two consecutive integer is 5*6. Hence n must be equal to 6.

The correct answer is A.
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by GMATGuruNY » Thu Jan 06, 2011 12:07 pm
Viper83 wrote:To furnish a room in a model home, an interior decorator is to select 2 chairs and 2 tables from a collection of chairs and tables in a warehouse that are all different from each other. If there are 5 chairs in the warehouse and if 150 different combinations are possible, how many tables are at the warehouse?

a. 6
b. 8
c. 10
d. 15
e. 30

a
Another approach:

Number of ways to choose 2 chairs from 5 choices = 5C2 = 10.
Number of table combinations = Total combinations/Chair combinations = 150/10 = 15.

Now we can plug in the answer choices, which represent the number of tables, to see which yields 15 possible combinations.

Only answer choice A works:
6C2 = 15.

The correct answer is A.
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