2016 AMC 12B Problems/Problem 16
Problem
In how many ways can be written as the sum of an increasing sequence of two or more consecutive positive integers?
Solution
We proceed with this problem by considering two cases, when: 1) There are an odd number of consecutive numbers, 2) There are an even number of consecutive numbers.
For the first case, we can cleverly choose the convenient form of our sequence to be
because then our sum will just be . We now have and will have a solution when is an integer, namely when is a divisor of 345. We check that work, and no more, because does not satisfy the requirements of two or more consecutive integers, and when equals the next biggest factor, , there must be negative integers in the sequence. Our solutions are .
For the even cases, we choose our sequence to be of the form: so the sum is . In this case, we find our solutions to be .
We have found all 7 solutions and our answer is .
See Also
2016 AMC 12B (Problems • Answer Key • Resources) | |
Preceded by Problem 15 |
Followed by Problem 17 |
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All AMC 12 Problems and Solutions |
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