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A committee of 6 U.S. senators is to be formed with 3 Democrats and 3 Republicans. In how many ways can this be done if there are 38 Democratic Senators and 62 Republic Senators?

A. 1,651,309 ways
B. 15,964,776 ways
C. 4,211,634 ways
D. 8,492,776 ways

User CcQpein
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1 Answer

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Final answer:

To form a committee of 6 U.S. senators with 3 Democrats and 3 Republicans, we can use combination formula to find the number of ways. The formula is C(n, r) = n! / (r! * (n-r)!), where n is the total number of options and r is the number of options to be selected. After calculating the two combinations, we divide the result by the number of permutations to get the final answer.

Step-by-step explanation:

To form a committee of 6 U.S. senators with 3 Democrats and 3 Republicans, we must choose 3 Democrats from the 38 Democratic Senators and 3 Republicans from the 62 Republican Senators. The number of ways this can be done is given by the combination formula. The number of ways to choose 3 Democrats from 38 is denoted as C(38, 3) and the number of ways to choose 3 Republicans from 62 is denoted as C(62, 3). To calculate these values, we can use the formula C(n, r) = n! / (r! * (n-r)!), where n is the total number of options and r is the number of options to be selected.

Using the formula, C(38, 3) = 38! / (3! * (38-3)!) and C(62, 3) = 62! / (3! * (62-3)!). Evaluating these expressions, we find that C(38, 3) = 8,492 and C(62, 3) = 21,640. Therefore, the total number of ways to form the committee is C(38, 3) * C(62, 3) = 8,492 * 21,640 = 183,073,280. However, the order of selection does not matter, so we divide this value by the number of permutations of 3 Democrats and 3 Republicans, which is 3! * 3! = 6 * 6 = 36. Therefore, the final answer is 183,073,280 / 36 = 5,085,369, which is approximately 5,085,369 ways. Hence, the correct answer is not listed among the given options.

User Ogun
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