In how many ways can 2 students be selected from a group of 5 students in a debating competition?

The number of ways to select 2 students from a group of 5 students is 10. Imagine you're picking two students from a lineup of 5 students. You can pick the first student in 5 different ways (student 1, student 2, student 3, student 4, or student 5). Once you've picked the first student, there are only 4 students left in the lineup, so you can only pick the second student in 4 different ways. So, to find the total number of ways to select 2 students from a group of 5, you multiply the number of ways to pick the first student by the number of ways to pick the second student: 5 * 4 = 20. However, since order doesn't matter (it doesn't matter if you pick student 1 first or student 2 first), you divide the total number of ways by 2 to account for the overcounting. So, the final answer is 20 / 2 = 10.