How many 3-element subsets of are there for which the sum of the 3 elements is divisible by 3?
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We group the numbers into three groups. The first group contains the numbers which are 1 mod 3, this group contains 5 numbers. The second group contains the numbers which are 2 mod 3, this group contains 4 numbers. The third group contains numbers which are divisible by 3, this group contains 4 numbers. To get a sum that is 0 modulo 3, the numbers can be (1,2,0), (0,0,0), (1,1,1) or (2,2,2). The numbers in the brackets represent the modulo 3 of each individual number and the order does not matter. Thus, the answer is simply 5 ⋅ 4 ⋅ 4 + 2 ( 4 3 ) + ( 5 3 ) = 9 8