Maths Olympiad Prep

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Combinatorics Difficulty 3.2 AMC 10/12 Find the answer

How many three-digit numbers are composed of three distinct digits such that one digit is the average of the other two?

Pick one

Solution

We can find the number of increasing arithmetic sequences of length 3 possible from 0 to 9, and then find all the possible permutations of these sequences.

Common difference
Sequences possible
Number of sequences

1
012,,789012, \ldots, 789
8

2
024,,579024, \ldots, 579
6

3
036,,369036, \ldots, 369
4

4
048,,159048, \ldots, 159
2

This gives us a total of 2+4+6+8=202 + 4 + 6 + 8 = 20 sequences. There are 3!=63! = 6 to permute these, for a total of 120120.
However, we note that the conditions of the problem require three-digit numbers, and hence our numbers cannot start with zero. There are 2!4=82! \cdot 4 = 8 numbers which start with zero, so our answer is 1208=112(C)120 - 8 = 112 \Longrightarrow \mathrm{(C)}.

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Source: NuminaMath-1.5, licensed Apache-2.0. Statement and solution reproduced as published; topic and difficulty added by this site.