Olympiad Maths Prep

Track / Stage 3 / 128 of 260 #128 of 2000

Problem 128

AMC 10/12, early questions
Number theory Difficulty 3.5 Find the answer

Daphne is visited periodically by her three best friends: Alice, Beatrix, and Claire. Alice visits every third day, Beatrix visits every fourth day, and Claire visits every fifth day. All three friends visited Daphne yesterday. How many days of the next 365365-day period will exactly two friends visit her?
(A) 48(B) 54(C) 60(D) 66(E) 72\textbf{(A)}\ 48\qquad\textbf{(B)}\ 54\qquad\textbf{(C)}\ 60\qquad\textbf{(D)}\ 66\qquad\textbf{(E)}\ 72

Official solution

The 365365-day time period can be split up into 66, 6060-day time periods, because after 6060 days, all three of them visit again (Least common multiple of 33, 44, and 55).
You can find how many times each pair of visitors can meet by finding the LCM of their visiting days and dividing that number by 60.
Remember to subtract 11, because you do not wish to count the 6060th day, when all three visit.
A and B visit 60341=4\frac{60}{3 \cdot 4}-1 = 4 times.
A and C visit 60351=3\frac{60}{3 \cdot 5}-1 = 3 times.
B and C visit 60451=2\frac{60}{4 \cdot 5}-1 = 2 times.

This is a total of 99 visits per 6060 day period.
Therefore, the total number of 22-person visits is 96=(B) 549 \cdot 6 = \boxed{\textbf{(B) }54}.

Note: We do not have to worry about the numbers over 360: (361,362,363,364,365361,362,363,364,365) having 2 factors. This is because we can rewrite
(361,362,363,364,365)(361,362,3121,491,573)(361,362,363,364,365) \Rightarrow (361,362, 3\cdot 121, 4 \cdot 91, 5 \cdot 73). We note that 121121 is not further divisible by 4 or 5, 9191 is not further divisible by 3 or 5, 73 is not further divisible by 3 or 4. Therefore, none of the numbers from 361365361-365 have 2 factors of 3,4,3,4, or 55, so we can conclude that the answer is indeed 54\boxed{54}

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