Maths Olympiad Prep

Library / Harvard-MIT Mathematics Tournament /177 of 352

Harvard-MIT Mathematics Tournament

Combinatorics Difficulty 5.1 AIME, harder Prove it United States

Problem:
A class of 10 students took a math test. Each problem was solved by exactly 7 of the students. If the first nine students each solved 4 problems, how many problems did the tenth student solve?

Solution

Solution:
Suppose the last student solved nn problems, and the total number of problems on the test was pp. Then the total number of correct solutions written was 7p7p (seven per problem), and also equal to 36+n36 + n (the sum of the students' scores), so p=(36+n)/7p = (36 + n)/7. The smallest n≥0n \geq 0 for which this is an integer is n=6n = 6. But we also must have n≤pn \leq p, so 7n≤36+n7n \leq 36 + n, and solving gives n≤6n \leq 6. Thus n=6n = 6 is the answer.

Want a route through all this instead of an archive? The track puts 2,604 problems in a working order, from Junior Challenge level to the IMO shortlist.

Source: MathNet, licensed CC-BY-4.0. Statement reproduced verbatim; metadata (topic, difficulty) added by this project.