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Number theory Difficulty 3.6 AMC 10/12 Find the answer

Let 11; 44; \ldots and 99; 1616; \ldots be two arithmetic progressions. The set SS is the union of the first 20042004 terms of each sequence. How many distinct numbers are in SS?

Pick one

Solution

The two sets of terms are A={3k+1 :0k<2004}A=\{ 3k+1 : 0\leq k < 2004 \} and B={7l+9 :0l<2004}B=\{ 7l+9 : 0\leq l<2004\}.
Now S=ABS=A\cup B. We can compute S=AB=A+BAB=4008AB|S|=|A\cup B|=|A|+|B|-|A\cap B|=4008-|A\cap B|. We will now find AB|A\cap B|.
Consider the numbers in BB. We want to find out how many of them lie in AA. In other words, we need to find out the number of valid values of ll for which 7l+9A7l+9\in A.
The fact "7l+9A7l+9\in A" can be rewritten as "17l+932003+11\leq 7l+9 \leq 3\cdot 2003 + 1, and 7l+91(mod3)7l+9\equiv 1\pmod 3".
The first condition gives 0l8570\leq l\leq 857, the second one gives l1(mod3)l\equiv 1\pmod 3.
Thus the good values of ll are {1,4,7,,856}\{1,4,7,\dots,856\}, and their count is 858/3=286858/3 = 286.
Therefore AB=286|A\cap B|=286, and thus S=4008AB=(A)3722|S|=4008-|A\cap B|=\boxed{(A) 3722}.

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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.