Twenty points are marked on a plane so that no three points are collinear except 7 points. How many triangles can be formed by joining the points?
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If none of the points were colinear, we would have the number of groups of three can be found out of twenty. That is the combination number ( 3 2 0 ) = 2 × 3 2 0 × 1 9 × 1 8 = 1 1 4 0 .
When 7 of them are colinear, this means the triangles formed by using exclusively these 7 points will be degenerate and cannot be counted. So the number we need to subtract is ( 3 7 ) = 2 × 3 7 × 6 × 5 = 3 5 .
The final result is 1 1 4 0 − 3 5 = 1 1 0 5 .