Olympiad Maths Prep

Track / Stage 3 / 61 of 260 #61 of 2000

Problem 61

AMC 10/12, early questions
Combinatorics Difficulty 3.2 Find the answer

For how many three-element sets of distinct positive integers {a,b,c}\{a,b,c\} is it true that a×b×c=2310a \times b \times c = 2310?

(A) 32(B) 36(C) 40(D) 43(E) 45\mathrm{(A) \ 32 } \qquad \mathrm{(B) \ 36 } \qquad \mathrm{(C) \ 40 } \qquad \mathrm{(D) \ 43 } \qquad \mathrm{(E) \ 45 }

Official solution

2310=2357112310 = 2 \cdot 3 \cdot 5 \cdot 7 \cdot 11. We wish to figure out the number of ways to distribute these prime factors amongst 3 different integers, without over counting triples which are simply permutations of one another.
We can account for permutations by assuming WLOG that aa contains the prime factor 2. Thus, there are 343^4 ways to position the other 4 prime numbers. Note that, with the exception of when all of the prime factors belong to aa, we have over counted each case twice, as for when we put certain prime factors into bb and the rest into cc, we count the exact same case when we put those prime factors which were in bb into cc.
Thus, our total number of cases is 3412=40C.\frac{3^4 - 1}{2} = 40 \Rightarrow \boxed{C}.

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