How do I find the minimum percentage of students liking at least $3$ of the sports?

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I have done every method I know of. The teacher said it took him 2 weeks. I am completely lost.

In a middle school, $79\%$ of the students like basketball, $64\%$ like volleyball, $49\%$ like tennis, $81\%$ like swimming, and $89\%$ like soccer. What is the minimum percentage of students who like $3$ or more sports?

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I think this works...

Try stripping away the percents, assume there are 100 students in the school:

  • 89 like soccer
  • 81 like swimming
  • 79 like basketball
  • 64 like volleyball
  • 49 like tennis

What's the smallest number of students who like 3 or more sports?

Summing, we get 89 + 81 + 79 + 64 + 49 = 362, so the average student likes 3.62 sports.

To minimize the total number of students liking 3 or more sports, you will want students that like 3 or more to like as many as possible. And if they like less than 3, they might as well like 2 to eat up as many liked sports as possible.

If the 49 students who like tennis also like the other 4 sports, that's 49 students who like all 5. They're consuming the maximum number of liked sports 5 * 49 = 245 that 49 students could.

That leaves 117 remaining liked sports and 51 remaining students.

We could have 8 students like the four remaining sports, but not tennis. That eats up 4 * 8 = 32 more liked sports.

So at this point we've accounted for 245 + 32 = 277 of the 362 liked sports with 49 + 8 = 57 kids. We have 85 liked sports to go for 43 kids. 42 of them can like 2 sports each and one kid can like just 1 sport.

That gives you a minimum of 57 kids that like at least three sports.

Ultimately, either of these are possible:

  • 49% 5 sports
  • 8% 4 sports
  • 0% 3 sports
  • 42% 2 sports
  • 1% 1 sport

Or:

  • 49% 5 sports
  • 7% 4 sports
  • 1% 3 sports
  • 43% 2 sports
  • 0% 1 sport

57% like 3 sports either way.