Set Problem
Venn diagrams can be used to solve problems that result from surveying groups of
people or from gathering data.
Example
Mrs. Jones is the vice-principal of a comprehensive high school. Part of her job is to determine the timetable
for the school year. From a total of 249 students in the school, she has found that 124 students requested
Chemistry, 95 requested Physics, and 163 requested Mathematics. As well, she noted that 49 requested
Chemistry and Physics, 61 requested Mathematics and Physics, 67 requested Mathematics and Chemistry,
and 27 requested all three. Draw a Venn diagram to illustrate the above situation and answer the following
questions:
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b) How many students did not request any of the courses?
Solution: There were 232 (27 + 22 + 34 + 40 + 35 + 12 + 62) requests forms all together. Thus, if the school has 249 students,
17 students did not request for any of the courses.
c) How many students requested only Physics and Math but not Chemistry?
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Solution: 34 students requested only Physics and Math, but not Chemistry.
Basic Counting Principle
Suppose that a task involves a sequence of k choices. Let be the number of ways the first stage or event can occur
and be the number of ways the second stage or event can occur after the first stage has occurred. Continuing in this
way, let be the number of ways the kth stage or event can occur after the first k - 1 stages or events have occurred.
Then the total number of different ways the task can occur is:
Example 1: A deli has a lunch special which consists of a sandwich, soup, dessert and drink for $4.99. They offer the
following choices:
Sandwich: chicken salad, ham, and tuna, and roast beef
Soup: tomato, chicken noodle, vegetable
Dessert: cookie and pie
Drink: tea, coffee, coke, diet coke and sprite
How many lunch specials are there?
Let’s use the basic counting principle:
There are 4 stages or events: choosing a sandwich, choosing a soup, choosing a dessert and choosing a drink.
There are 4 choices for the sandwich, 3 choices for the soup, 2 choices for the dessert and 5 choices for the drink.
Putting that all together we get:
# of lunch specials
Sand. Soup Dessert Drink
4 x 3 x 2 x 5 = 120
So there are 120 lunch specials possible.
Example 2: You are taking a test that has five True/False questions. If you answer each question with True or False
and leave none of them blank, in how many ways can you answer the whole test?
Let’s use the basic counting principle:
There are 5 stages or events: question 1, question 2, question 3, question 4, and question 5.
There are 2 choices for each question.
Putting that all together we get:
# of ways to answer test
quest. 1 quest. 2 quest. 3 quest. 4 quest. 5
2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 = 32
So there are 32 different ways to answer the whole test.
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Example 3: A company places a 6-symbol code on each unit of product. The code consists of 4 digits, the first of
which is the number 5, followed by 2 letters, the first of which is NOT a vowel. How many different codes are
possible?
Let’s use the basic counting principle:
There are 6 stages or events: digit 1, digit 2, digit 3, digit 4, letter 1, and letter 2.
In general there are 10 digits: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9. The first digit is limited to being the number 5, so there is
only one possibility for that one. There are no restriction on digits 2 - 4, so each one of those has 10 possibilities.
In general, there are 26 letters in the alphabet. The first letter, cannot be a vowel (a, e, i, o, u), so that means there are 21
possible letters that could go there. The second letter has no restriction, so there are 26 possibilities for that one.
Putting that all together we get:
digit 1 digit 2 digit 3 digit 4 letter 1 letter 2 # of codes
1 x 10 x 10 x 10 x 21 x 26 = 546000
So there are 546000 different 6-symbol codes possible.
Example 4: All the Grameen Phone numbers start with 017. How many subscribers can be served by the company with
a unique number if each number consists of 11 digits?
Answer: 109-1 if 01700000000 is not a number.
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