Let be a set of distinct positive integers such that the mean of the elements of any nonempty subset of is an integer. Find the smallest possible value of the sum of the elements in .
Solution
For , we claim that . This is because if we consider any of the 7 numbers, the other of them must all be equal modulo , because we want the sum of all subsets of size to be a multiple of . However, , and this argument applies to any of the 7 integers, so in fact all of them must be equal modulo . We now have that all of the integers are equivalent modulo all of , so they are equivalent modulo 60, their least common multiple. Therefore, if the smallest integer is , then the other 6 integers must be at least . This means the sum is . 1267 is achievable with , so it is the answer.
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