2024 AMC 10B Problem 12
Problem 12 of 25IntermediateAlgebraCounting & Probability
A group of students from different countries meet at a mathematics competition. Each student speaks the same number of languages, and, for every pair of students and student speaks some language that student does not speak, and student speaks some language that student does not speak. What is the least possible total number of languages spoken by all the students?
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Solution
Give each student the set of languages they speak. The condition says no one’s set sits inside another’s. Everyone speaks the same number of languages, and two distinct -element sets can never contain each other, so all we need is different -subsets of the languages, i.e. With the best we can manage is short of But So languages are both enough and necessary. Therefore, the answer is A.