In your choir there are 6 singers who are boys and 6 who are girls. How many ways are there to choose 4 boys and 4 girls to form a smaller group to sing madrigals? Extensions of the problem and a complete discussion of the underlying mathematical ideas are included.

In your choir there are 6 singers who are boys and 6 who are girls. How many ways are there to choose 4 boys and 4 girls to form a smaller group to sing madrigals? Extensions of the problem and a complete discussion of the underlying mathematical ideas are included. This mathematically rich problem was originally developed for the Project Discovery Mathematics by Inquiry institutes for middle grades teachers taught in 1992 - 1994 at Ohio State University. Project Discovery was co-funded by the Ohio Board of Regents and the Statewide Systemic Initiative (SSI) program of the National Science Foundation. (author/sw)