Browsing as Guest. Progress, bookmarks and attempts are disabled.
Log in to track your work.
Nov 2008 p6 q4
2805
A builder is planning to build 12 houses along one side of a road. He will build 2 houses in style A, 2 houses in style B, 3 houses in style C, 4 houses in style D and 1 house in style E.
(i) Find the number of possible arrangements of these 12 houses.
(ii) The 12 houses will be in two groups of 6 (see diagram). Find the number of possible arrangements if all the houses in styles A and D are in the first group and all the houses in styles B, C and E are in the second group.
Solution
(i) To find the number of possible arrangements of the 12 houses, we use the formula for permutations of multiset:
(ii) For the second part, we need to arrange the houses in two groups of 6. In the first group, we have all houses in styles A and D, which are 2 and 4 respectively. The number of arrangements for the first group is:
\(\frac{6!}{4!2!}\)
In the second group, we have all houses in styles B, C, and E, which are 2, 3, and 1 respectively. The number of arrangements for the second group is:
\(\frac{6!}{2!3!}\)
The total number of arrangements is the product of the arrangements of the two groups: