If seven people meet each other and each shakes hands only once with each of the others, how many handshakes will there have been?
Seven people must shake hands with six other people.... you might think that is 42 handshakes ....BUT...each handshake involves TWO people so the total number of handshakes is 1/2 of 42 = 21 handshakes.
To find the number of handshakes, we can use the formula for the sum of the first n-1 positive integers, which is given by (n-1)n/2.
In this problem, n is equal to seven since there are seven people.
Using the formula, the number of handshakes will be (7-1) * 7/2 = 6 * 7/2 = 42/2 = 21.
Therefore, there will be 21 handshakes in total.