Question

In the local frisbee league, teams have 7 members and each of the 4 teams takes turns hosting tournaments. At each tournament, each team selects two members of that team to be on the tournament committee, except the host team, which selects three members. How many possible 9 member tournament committees are there?

Answer 1

There are 4 teams in total and each team has 7 members. One of the team will be the host team.

Tournament committee will be made from 3 members from the host team and 2 members from each of the three remaining teams. Selecting the members for tournament committee is a combinations problem. We have to select 3 members out 7 for host team and 2 members out of 7 from each of the remaining 3 teams.

So total number of possible 9 member tournament committees will be equal to:

$7C3 \times 7C2 \times 7C2 \times 7C2\\ \\ = 324135$

This is the case when a host team is fixed. Since any team can be the host team, there are 4 possible ways to select a host team. So the total number of possible 9 member tournament committee will be:

$9 \times 324135\\ \\ =2917215$

Therefore, there are 2917215 possible 9 member tournament committees