Instructions

In a certain board examination, students were to appear for examination in five subjects:
English, Hindi, Mathematics, Science and Social Science. Due to a certain emergency situation, a few of the examinations could not be conducted for some students. Hence, some students missed one examination and some others missed two examinations. Nobody missed more than two examinations.

The board adopted the following policy for awarding marks to students. If a student appeared in all five examinations, then the marks awarded in each of the examinations were on the basis of the scores obtained by them in those examinations.

If a student missed only one examination, then the marks awarded in that examination was the average of the best three among the four scores in the examinations they appeared for. If a student missed two examinations, then the marks awarded in each of these examinations was the average of the best two among the three scores in the examinations they appeared for. The marks obtained by six students in the examination are given in the table below. Each of them missed either one or two examinations.

The following facts are also known.
I. Four of these students appeared in each of the English, Hindi, Science, and Social Science examinations.
II. The student who missed the Mathematics examination did not miss any other examination.
III. One of the students who missed the Hindi examination did not miss any other examination. The other student who missed the Hindi examination also missed the Science examination.

Question 32

For how many students can we be definite about which examinations they missed?


Correct Answer: 4

Solution

Based on Condition II, we understand that the student who missed the Mathematics examination did not miss any other examination. This indicates that the Maths score is bound to be the average of the best 3 out of the 4 exam scores obtained by this candidate. Based on this inference, we can proceed with identifying the math score that can be represented as an average of the rest of the scores. We can straightaway eliminate Deep and Esha as potential candidates, given that their Mathematics score is greater than the rest of the exam scores. After estimating the average scores for the rest of the candidates, we observe that only Carl has missed his Mathematics examination.

For Carl: best 3 out of 4 - 80(Hindi), 90(Social Science), 100(Science)

Avg. = 270/3 = 90 which matches the given value

$$\therefore\ $$ Carl missed his Mathematics examination.

Further, based on Condition III, we can surmise that the student who missed Hindi and Science should have similar average scores in these two subjects. We notice that Alva has the same score of 75 in both Hindi and Science. The same can be said about Deep, who has a score of 90 in both these subjects. Thus, one out of Alva and Deep missed out on Hindi and Science examination, while the second individual missed out only on the Hindi examination.

Since we know that Carl, Alva and Deep are unlikely to have missed out on the English exam, we can divert our attention to determining which individual out of Bithi, Esha and Foni failed to appear for this subject. However, we notice that Bithi's English score is greater than the rest of her scores, thereby helping us eliminate her as the potential candidate.

For Esha: best 3 out of 4 - 85(Hindi), 95(Mathematics), 60(Science)

Avg. = 240/3 = 80 which matches the given value

$$\therefore\ $$ Esha most likely missed her English examination.

For Foni: best 3 out of 4 - 78(Mathematics), 83(Social Science), 88(Science)

Avg. = 249/3 = 83 which matches the given value

$$\therefore\ $$ Foni most likely missed her English examination.

Based on Condition I, we know that exactly two candidates missed the examinations for English, Hindi, Science, and Social Science.

For English, we determined these individuals to be Esha and Foni. For Hindi, we determined these individuals to be Alva and Deep. For Science, we know one of the individuals is either Alva or Deep. Given that Carl, Alva and Deep cannot be a part of the group that missed Science or Social Science exam, we can proceed by carefully scrutinizing the rest of the group that includes Bithi, Esha and Foni.

We notice that Bithi has a similar score in both Science and Social Science examination. Assuming that she did miss these exams, let us proceed to check if this was actually the case.

For Bithi: Best 2 out 3 - 90(English), 80(Hindi)

Avg = 170/2 = 85 which matches the given value

$$\therefore\ $$ Bithi is likely to have missed her Science and Social Science examinations.

We additionally notice that Foni has a similar score in English and Social Science. On considering the best 2 out of 3 scores, the average value of the score for both the subject holds (equal to 83). Thus, we can conclude that Bithi and Foni missed their Social Science examination.

Thus, the students who missed just one exam were: Carl (Mathematics); Esha (English) and one out of Alva and Deep (Hindi).

Hence of the six students, we can correctly determine the missed subjects for four of them (except Alva and Deep):

Mathematics: Carl ; English: Esha & Foni ; Hindi: Alva & Deep; Science: Bithi & one out of Alva and Deep ; Social Science: Foni & Bithi

Except for Alva and Deep, we can conclusively comment of the missed subjects of the rest four. Hence, the correct answer is 4.

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