Skip to main content
OlympiadHQ

Browse · harp

Print

imc

counting and probability intermediate

Problem

At a gathering of people, there are people who all know each other and people who know no one. People who know each other hug, and people who do not know each other shake hands. How many handshakes occur within the group?
(A)
(B)
(C)
(D)
Solution
Each one of the ten people has to shake hands with all the other people they don't know. So . From there, we calculate how many handshakes occurred between the people who don't know each other. This is simply counting how many ways to choose two people to shake hands from , or . Thus the answer is .
Final answer
B