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An engineering group consists of 12 men and 13 women.

If 2 women refuse to be on the same team together, how many different project teams can be formed consisting of 5 men and 5 women?

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Count the number of ways to choose $5$ men from the $12$ available; I think that you know how to do that. Now call the awkward women $A$ and $B$.

  1. Count the number of ways to choose $5$ women from the $11$ more sociable ones, so that neither $A$ nor $B$ is chosen.
  2. Count the number of ways to choose $A$ and $4$ of the $11$ more sociable women.
  3. Do the same for $B$.

Alternatively, you can count the number of unusable $5$-woman groups, i.e., those that contain both $A$ and $B$, and subtract that from the number of all possible $5$-woman groups.

Now you have the total number of ways in which you can choose the women. Multiply by the number of ways to choose the men, and you’re done.

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    @Imray: Now you’ve got it. $\binom{12}5$ is the number of ways to choose the male half, and $\binom{11}5+2\binom{11}4$ is the number of ways to choose the female half, so the number of ways to choose the whole committee is the product of those numbers.2012-09-24
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Hint: for the women, you can select 5 of the 11 who will work with anybody, or select 4 of 11 plus 1 of 2.

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    Can you explain that?2012-09-24