Maths Olympiad Prep

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, 2012

Algebra Difficulty 4.6 AIME Find the answer Slovenia

Jakob is reading a book with 630630 pages. On the first day he read one third of the book. The sum of the numbers labelling pages that Jakob read on the second day is 44004400. How many pages does Jakob still need to read to come to the end of the book? (The first page of the book is numbered 11.)

Pick one

Solution

On the first day, Jakob read 210210 pages of the book. Suppose that on the second day he read nn pages. Then the sum of the numbers on these pages was equal to 211+212+213++(210+n)=210n+n(n+1)2211 + 212 + 213 + \ldots + (210 + n) = 210n + \frac{n(n+1)}{2}, hence 210n+n(n+1)2=4410210n + \frac{n(n+1)}{2} = 4410. From this we get 210n4410210n \leq 4410 or n20n \leq 20. Taking n=20n = 20 gives us 210n+n(n+1)2=4410210n + \frac{n(n+1)}{2} = 4410, from which we conclude that on the second day he read 2020 pages, and he still needs to read 63021020=400630 - 210 - 20 = 400 pages to come to the end of the book.

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