Olympiad Maths Prep

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Algebra Difficulty 5.4 AIME, harder Prove it Romania

Each of the numbers 1,2,3,,311, 2, 3, \ldots, 31 is written on a separate card. Alex and Bogdan pick 1515 cards each and notice that the sum of Alex's cards is three times larger than the sum of Bogdan's cards. Find the number of the remaining card.

Solution

Let AA and BB be the respective sums. Then BB is at least 1+2+3++15=1201+2+3+\ldots+15 = 120, so AA is at least 3120=3603 \cdot 120 = 360. But AA is at most 17+18++31=36017+18+\ldots+31 = 360, so AA must be 360360 and BB must be 120120. Therefore Alex must pick 17,18,,3117, 18, \ldots, 31 and Bogdan has to pick 1,2,,151, 2, \ldots, 15, so the remaining card must have 1616 written on it.

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