The average of a set of distinct primes is 27. What is the largest prime that can be in this set?
Solution
Denote the set of these primes by and the number of elements in by n. There are 9 primes smaller than 27, namely and 23. Since 27 is odd and all primes except 2 are odd, . Thus the largest prime is at most , so . When the primes are and 139, their average is 27. Therefore .
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