Maths Olympiad Prep

Library / Slovenia — National Math Olympiad /10 of 122

Slovenia — National Math Olympiad

Algebra Difficulty 3.9 AMC 10/12 Find the answer Slovenia

Yesterday in the playground the ratio of boys to girls was 3:23 : 2. Today, the number of boys is the square of the number of girls and there are 66 boys and 77 girls less than yesterday. How many children were there in the playground yesterday?

Pick one

Solution

Yesterday there were 3t3t boys and 2t2t girls in the playground. Today, there are 3t−63t-6 boys and 2t−72t-7 girls. From 3t−6=(2t−7)23t-6 = (2t-7)^2 we get 4t2−31t+55=04t^2-31t+55 = 0, so t1,2=31±818t_{1,2} = \frac{31\pm\sqrt{81}}{8}. The only possible solution is t=5t = 5, since tt is an integer. Yesterday there were 3t=153t = 15 boys and 2t=102t = 10 girls in the playground, or 2525 children altogether.

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.