Question

Given six distinct pairs of gloves, 12 distinct gloves in all, how many ways are there to distribute two gloves to each of six sisters

Answer 1

a) if the two gloves someone receives might both be for the left hand or right hand.

b) if each sister gets one left and one right.

Soln:

a) So i thought about dissectng the problem first into finding the number of ways in which I could make pairs of gloves:

C(12, 2)

then I asked how many ways could the sets of gloves be assigned amongst the 6 sisters:

6!6!

and taking the product of this would give me the amount of ways this could occur:

= C(12,2) * 6!

then for part b)

using this same idea except:

C(6,1) C(6,1) for the left and right glove each .

the C(6,1)*C(6,1)*6!

Right way to think them through?