2002 AMC 12A Problems/Problem 19
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Problem
The graph of the function is shown below. How many solutions does the equation
have?
Solution
First of all, note that the equation has two solutions:
and
.
Given an , let
. Obviously, to have
, we need to have
, and we already know when that happens. In other words, the solutions to
are precisely the solutions to (
or
).
Without actually computing the exact values, it is obvious from the graph that the equation has two and
has four different solutions, giving us a total of
solutions.
See Also
2002 AMC 12A (Problems • Answer Key • Resources) | |
Preceded by Problem 18 |
Followed by Problem 20 |
1 • 2 • 3 • 4 • 5 • 6 • 7 • 8 • 9 • 10 • 11 • 12 • 13 • 14 • 15 • 16 • 17 • 18 • 19 • 20 • 21 • 22 • 23 • 24 • 25 | |
All AMC 12 Problems and Solutions |
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