Problema Solution

Problem: There are 60 people in a music class.

20 play the flute, 10 play the violin, 20 play the piano.

10 play both the flute and the piano, and 5 play all three instruments. How many students don't play any instruments?

Answer provided by our tutors

Venn Diagram:


We see that 10 - 5 = 5 people play the flute and the piano (but nothing else)

20 - 15 = 5 people play just the flute only

20 - 15 = 5 people play just the piano only

10 people play just the violin only

10-5 =5 people play the violin and one other instrument only

5 people play all three

Adding those up, we get:

5 + 5 + 5 + 10 + 5 + 5 =

10 + 15 + 10 = 35

Therefore 25 students do not play a single instrument.

We can also arrange these numbers into sets:

 

Violin only player is the set of 10 students. If we assign each of the 60 students a number (student #1 = 1, student #2 = 2 ... student #60 = 60) then we can write:

Violins Only: [1, 2, 3, 4 ... 9, 10]

Flute Only: [11, 12, 13, 14 ,15]

Piano Only: [16, 17, 18, 19, 20]

Violin & Piano or Violin & Flute: [21, 22, 23, 24, 25]

All Three: [26, 27, 28, 29, 30]

None (don't play an instrument): [31, 32, 33 ... 59, 60]


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