2010 AMC 10B Problems/Problem 24
Problem
A high school basketball game between the Raiders and Wildcats was tied at the end of the first quarter. The number of points scored by the Raiders in each of the four quarters formed an increasing geometric sequence, and the number of points scored by the Wildcats in each of the four quarters formed an increasing arithmetic sequence. At the end of the fourth quarter, the Raiders had won by one point. Neither team scored more than points. What was the total number of points scored by the two teams in the first half?
Solution 1
Represent the teams' scores as: and
We have
Factoring out the
from the left side of the equation, we can get
, or
Since both are increasing sequences, . We can check cases up to
because when
, we get
. When
Checking each of these cases individually back into the equation , we see that only when
and
, we get an integer value for
, which is
. The original question asks for the first half scores summed, so we must find
- This solution is incomplete because it doesn't consider r could be a fraction.
Solution 2
As above, represent the teams' scores as: and
.
Note that the Wildcat's sum, , is even. Therefore, since the Wildcat's sum is one less than the Raiders, the Raider's team's score should be odd. But if all of
are of the same parity, the sum will be even. If
is even, then the rest of the scores will be even, so clearly
is odd. Then,
is even.
But if , only
satisfies the requirement that the total score of each team is less than
. We can test this out and see it doesn't work.
Therefore, . If we try
, we quickly see only
satisfies all of the conditions. Therefore, our team's scores are
and
, and the answer is
.
Discussion
Couldn't we also say Raiders:1,2,4,8 and Wildcats:1,3,5,7 so the Raiders have won by one point? Is this false because in actual basketball you can only score 2 or more points? ---> Raiders would have a total of 15 points and the WildCats would have a total of 16 points.
See also
2010 AMC 10B (Problems • Answer Key • Resources) | ||
Preceded by Problem 23 |
Followed by Problem 25 | |
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 | ||
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