Problems

A student council must select a two-person welcoming committee and a three-person planning committee from among its members. There are exactly 10 ways to select a two-person team for the welcoming committee. It is possible for students to serve on both committees. In how many different ways can a three-person planning …

Daphne is visited periodically by her three best friends: Alice, Beatrix, and Claire. Alice visits every third day, Beatrix visits every fourth day, and Claire visits every fifth day. All three friends visited Daphne yesterday. How many days of the next 365-day period will exactly two friends visit her?

Central High School is competing against Northern High School in a backgammon match. Each school has three players, and the contest rules require that each player play two games against each of the other school's players. The match takes place in six rounds, with three games played simultaneously in each round. In how …

All 20 diagonals are drawn in a regular octagon. At how many distinct points in the interior of the octagon (not on the boundary) do two or more diagonals intersect?

Let $S$ be the set of sides and diagonals of a regular pentagon. A pair of elements of $S$ are selected at random without replacement. What is the probability that the two chosen segments have the same length?

Alex has $75$ red tokens and $75$ blue tokens. There is a booth where Alex can give two red tokens and receive in return a silver token and a blue token, and another booth where Alex can give three blue tokens and receive in return a silver token and a red token. Alex continues to exchange tokens until no more …

The regular octagon $ABCDEFGH$ has its center at $J$ . Each of the vertices and the center are to be associated with one of the digits $1$ through $9$ , with each digit used once, in such a way that the sums of the numbers on the lines $AJE$ , $BJF$ , $CJG$ , and $DJH$ are all equal. In how many ways can this be done?

A pair of six-sided dice are labeled so that one die has only even numbers (two each of $2$ , $4$ , and $6$ ), and the other die has only odd numbers (two each of $1$ , $3$ , and $5$ ). The pair of dice is rolled. What is the probability that the sum of the numbers on the tops of the two dice is $7$ ?

Chubby makes nonstandard checkerboards that have $31$ squares on each side. The checkerboards have a black square in every corner and alternate red and black squares along every row and column. How many black squares are there on such a checkerboard?

A $3 \times 3$ square is partitioned into $9$ unit squares. Each unit square is painted either white or black with each color being equally likely, chosen independently and at random. The square is then rotated $90\,^{\circ}$ clockwise about its center, and every white square in a position formerly occupied by a black …

Adam, Benin, Chiang, Deshawn, Esther, and Fiona have internet accounts. Some, but not all, of them are internet friends with each other, and none of them has an internet friend outside this group. Each of them has the same number of internet friends. In how many different ways can this happen?

Real numbers $x$ , $y$ , and $z$ are chosen independently and at random from the interval $[0,n]$ for some positive integer $n$ . The probability that no two of $x$ , $y$ , and $z$ are within 1 unit of each other is greater than $\frac {1}{2}$ . What is the smallest possible value of $n$ ?

A dessert chef prepares the dessert for every day of a week starting with Sunday. The dessert each day is either cake, pie, ice cream, or pudding. The same dessert may not be served two days in a row. There must be cake on Friday because of a birthday. How many different dessert menus for the week are possible?

In a round-robin tournament with 6 teams, each team plays one game against each other team, and each game results in one team winning and one team losing. At the end of the tournament, the teams are ranked by the number of games won. What is the maximum number of teams that could be tied for the most wins at the end of …

Suppose that one of every 500 people in a certain population has a particular disease, which displays no symptoms. A blood test is available for screening for this disease. For a person who has this disease, the test always turns out positive. For a person who does not have the disease, however, there is a $2\%$ false …

Bernardo and Silvia play the following game. An integer between 0 and 999, inclusive, is selected and given to Bernardo. Whenever Bernardo receives a number, he doubles it and passes the result to Silvia. Whenever Silvia receives a number, she adds 50 to it and passes the result to Bernardo. The winner is the last …

Let $(a_1,a_2, \dots ,a_{10})$ be a list of the first 10 positive integers such that for each $2 \le i \le 10$ either $a_i+1$ or $a_i-1$ or both appear somewhere before $a_i$ in the list. How many such lists are there?

Amy, Beth, and Jo listen to four different songs and discuss which ones they like. No song is liked by all three. Furthermore, for each of the three pairs of the girls, there is at least one song liked by those girls but disliked by the third. In how many different ways is this possible?

A bug travels from A to B along the segments in the hexagonal lattice pictured below. The segments marked with an arrow can be traveled only in the direction of the arrow, and the bug never travels the same segment more than once. How many different paths are there?

How many even integers are there between 200 and 700 whose digits are all different and come from the set {1, 2, 5, 7, 8, 9}?

A pair of standard 6-sided fair dice is rolled once. The sum of the numbers rolled determines the diameter of a circle. What is the probability that the numerical value of the area of the circle is less than the numerical value of the circle's circumference?

Two points on the circumference of a circle of radius $r$ are selected independently and at random. From each point a chord of length $r$ is drawn in a clockwise direction. What is the probability that the two chords intersect?

Two counterfeit coins of equal weight are mixed with 8 identical genuine coins. The weight of each of the counterfeit coins is different from the weight of each of the genuine coins. A pair of coins is selected at random without replacement from the 10 coins. A second pair is selected at random without replacement from …

Each vertex of convex pentagon $ABCDE$ is to be assigned a color. There are $6$ colors to choose from, and the ends of each diagonal must have different colors. How many different colorings are possible?

Seven students count from 1 to 1000 as follows: - Alice says all the numbers, except she skips the middle number in each consecutive group of three numbers. That is, Alice says 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 9, ..., 997, 999, 1000. - Barbara says all of the numbers that Alice doesn't say, except she also skips the middle number in …