How many different albums?

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How many different albums?

by Vemuri » Fri Apr 03, 2009 5:19 am
There are 5 Rock songs, 6 Carnatic songs and 3 Indi pop songs. How many different albums can be formed using the above repertoire if the albums should contain at least 1 Rock song and 1 Carnatic song?

A) 15624
B) 16384
C) 6144
D) 240
E) None of these
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Solving by using combination logic.

by kapsii » Fri Apr 03, 2009 8:48 am
IMHO answer is A (i.e. 15624).

Reasoning:
<pre-requisite>
How many ways are there to choose any number of things out of n things?
So, we can select 0 out of n things, 1 out of n things and so on...
hence the formula will be:
nC0 + nC1 + nC2 + ..... + nCn = 2^n

From this we can deduce:
How many ways are there to choose atleast one out of n things?
A: (2^n) - 1 (as nC0 = 1)
</pre-requisite>

As you have 5 rock songs, how many songs can you pick to use in your album? You have to select at least one hence:
No of ways to choose Rock songs = (2^5) - 1 = 31

Similiarly, number of ways to choose Carnatic songs for your album = 2^6 - 1 = 63.

But it does not say that we HAVE to choose a indi-pop song... hence, number of ways to choose indi-pop song = 2^3 = 8.

Remember the way to count, if there are 3 things to do one after another, with combinations of say M, N & P, then total ways of doing it is M*N*P.

Thus our total count should be a multiple of the three values we calculated earlier.

= 31 * 63 * 8 = 15624.
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