THIS IS THE solution to yesterday’s rugby-themed question.

1. How many ways is there for a team to score 17 points in a rugby match?

Answer: There are 3 ways for a team to score 17 points

Method

2. If two teams play and their final scores together add up to 17 points, how many ways is there to make up this score?

Answer: 11

Method

If the two teams’ score adds to 17 point this can be made in a far greater number of ways.

For a start there are 6 different scorelines:

Remember there are three ways for a team to score 17 points. So there may be other ways for each of the other scorelines. These are worked out below.

Details of each of these:

3. And finally, if we are to differentiate between penalty goals and drop goals how many ways are there for the two teams to score a match total of 17 points?

Answer: 44

Method

A score of 3 goals could be:

That is 4 possibilities (= number of goals + 1)

If the opposing team also scored several goals we would calculate the number of possibilities the same way (number of goals + 1) and multiply this number by the number of possibilities for the first team.

For instance if Team 1 scores 3 goals and Team 2 scores 1 goal the possibilities are –

(3 + 1) x (1 + 1) = 8

Did you get all three questions correct? Let us know in the comments.

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