Celeb Glow
general | April 14, 2026

Ways to choose 10 questions from a 13 divided into two sets

$\begingroup$

A test requires to answer 10 questions, choosing atleast 4 from each of Parts A and B. If there are 6 questions in Part A and 7 in Part B, in how many ways can one choose 10 questions?

One way to solve this would be to consider the different possibilities. One can have

4 from Part A and 6 from Part B

or 5 from Part A and 5 from Part B

or 6 from Part A and 4 from Part B.

So the number is ways is $(^6C_4 \times ^7C_5 )+(^6C_5 \times ^7C_5 )+(^6C_6 \times ^7C_4 ) = 266$

I tried solving this another way but I am getting a different answer. Please explain what is the faulty argument in the following- First choose all the compulsory questions. One has to choose 4 from part A. The number of ways to choose would be $^{6}C_4$. From the second set, the number of ways to choose the compulsory questions would be $^{7}C_4$. This leaves two more questions to be answered which can come from either of the sets. As now there are 2 more question left in A and 3 in B, total number of questions to choose from is 5. So the ways to choose this would be $^5C_2$.

Therefore the total ways to do the selection is $^6C_4 \times ^7C_4 \times ^5C_2 = 5250$. Why is the second method wrong?

PS. I know it is the second one that is wrong because the first one is the textbook solution.

$\endgroup$ 2 Reset to default

Know someone who can answer? Share a link to this question via email, Twitter, or Facebook.

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Sign up using Google Sign up using Facebook Sign up using Email and Password

Post as a guest

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and cookie policy