Track / Stage 3 / 13 of 260 #13 of 2000

Problem 13

AMC 10/12, early questions

Combinatorics Difficulty 3.0 Find the answer

Jamal wants to save 30 files onto disks, each with 1.44 MB space. 3 of the files take up 0.8 MB, 12 of the files take up 0.7 MB, and the rest take up 0.4 MB. It is not possible to split a file onto 2 different disks. What is the smallest number of disks needed to store all 30 files?
$\textbf{(A)}\ 12 \qquad \textbf{(B)}\ 13 \qquad \textbf{(C)}\ 14 \qquad \textbf{(D)}\ 15 \qquad \textbf{(E)} 16$

Your answer

Official solution

A $0.8$ MB file can either be on its own disk, or share it with a $0.4$ MB. Clearly it is better to pick the second possibility. Thus we will have $3$ disks, each with one $0.8$ MB file and one $0.4$ MB file.
We are left with $12$ files of $0.7$ MB each, and $12$ files of $0.4$ MB each. Their total size is $12\cdot (0.7 + 0.4) = 13.2$ MB. The total capacity of $9$ disks is $9\cdot 1.44 = 12.96$ MB, hence we need at least $10$ more disks. And we can easily verify that $10$ disks are indeed enough: six of them will carry two $0.7$ MB files each, and four will carry three $0.4$ MB files each.
Thus our answer is $3+10 = \boxed{\textbf{(B) }13 }$ .

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