2015 AMC 8
Complete problem set with solutions and individual problem pages
At Euler Middle School, students voted on two issues in a school referendum with the following results: voted in favor of the first issue and voted in favor of the second issue. If there were exactly students who voted against both issues, how many students voted in favor of both issues?
- A.
- B.
- C.
- D.
- E.
Solution 1
Let:
- be the number of students who voted in favor of the first issue,
- be the number of students who voted in favor of the second issue,
- be the number of students who voted in favor of both issues.
We are given:
-
-
- students voted against both issues, so the number of students who voted for at least one issue is:
By the principle of inclusion and exclusion:
Substitute known values:
 
Solution 2
We can see that this is a Venn Diagram Problem.
First, we analyze the information given. There are students. Let's use A as the first issue and B as the second issue.
students were for A, and students were for B. There were also students against both A and B.
Solving this without a Venn Diagram, we subtract away from the total, . Out of the remaining , we have people for A and
people for B. We add this up to get . Since that is more than what we need, we subtract from to get
.

