Maths Olympiad Prep

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Algebra Difficulty 5.2 AIME, harder Find the answer

What is the sum of all four-digit numbers that are equal to the cube of the sum of their digits (leading zeros are not allowed)?

A number or a short expression. Spacing and $ signs are ignored.

Solution

We want to find all integers xx between 1000 and 9999 that are the cube of the sum of their digits. Of course, our search is only restricted to perfect cubes. The smallest such cube is 103=100010^{3}=1000 and the largest such cube is 213=926121^{3}=9261. This means we only have to check 12 different cubes, which is quite doable, but we can reduce the search even further with a little number theory. Suppose we write our number as x=1000a+100b+10c+dx=1000 a+100 b+10 c+d, where a,b,ca, b, c, and dd are the decimal digits of xx. Then we have (a+b+c+d)31000a+100b+10c+da+b+c+d(mod9)(a+b+c+d)^{3} \equiv 1000 a+100 b+10 c+d \equiv a+b+c+d(\bmod 9) If we let k=a+b+c+dk=a+b+c+d, then kk must be a solution to the modular equation k3k(mod9)k^{3} \equiv k(\bmod 9). A quick check of the values 0 through 8 shows that the only solutions are 0,1 , and 8 . Now, in our search, we only have to check values that are the cube of a number which is either 0,1 , or 8mod98 \bmod 9. 103=1000, but 1+0+0+010173=4913, and 4+9+1+3=17183=5832, and 5+8+3+2=18193=6859, but 6+8+5+919\begin{aligned} & 10^{3}=1000, \text { but } 1+0+0+0 \neq 10 \\ & 17^{3}=4913, \text { and } 4+9+1+3=17 \\ & 18^{3}=5832, \text { and } 5+8+3+2=18 \\ & 19^{3}=6859, \text { but } 6+8+5+9 \neq 19 \end{aligned} So the only solutions are 4913 and 5832 , which sum to 10745 .

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