in how many ways can a six-member committee form a subcommittee with at least two members
Here is my guess on answering this question. Firstly, because the question only states the minimum number of members that can be in the subcommittee, we must ask ourselves, what is the maximum number of memebers can a subcommitte contain and does the order of the memebers in the group matter? Lets say that there can be a maximum of five individuals within the subcommitte, assuming that not all the members can be part of it and that the order doesn't matter, meaning that if a group contains the same members just in a different order, then it doesn't actually count as a new group. If this is the case then we would use combination to find the total amount of variations for the group. We would find the sum of each possibility, starting with the five person group. So...
6C5=6
6C4 =15
6C3=20
6C2=15
56 different ways.
You can alter the number depending on the total amount of people that can be in a the group. For example, if only 3 people could be in the group. It would simply be 6C2 which, as we've seen before, is 15 plus the 6C3 which is 20. We'd end up with 35.
Now, because the question was a little vague and I may have done some of this wrong, you may want to alter this informatin a bit. However, I believe this is the way it's supposed to be done. If you need help with permutations and combinations, check out this site http://www.regentsprep.org/regents/math/algtrig/ats5/lcomb.htm
Hope this answers your question or at least gives you an idea of what to do. Good luck!
