2015 AMC 10A Problems/Problem 18

Problem 18

Hexadecimal (base-16) numbers are written using numeric digits $0$ through $9$ as well as the letters $A$ through $F$ to represent $10$ through $15$ . Among the first $1000$ positive integers, there are $n$ whose hexadecimal representation contains only numeric digits. What is the sum of the digits of $n$ ?

$\textbf{(A) }17\qquad\textbf{(B) }18\qquad\textbf{(C) }19\qquad\textbf{(D) }20\qquad\textbf{(E) }21$

Solution

Notice that $1000$ is $3E8$ in hexadecimal. We will proceed by constructing numbers that consist of only numeric digits in hexadecimal.

The first digit could be $0,$ $1,$ $2,$ or $3,$ and the second two could be any digit $0 - 9$ , giving $4 \cdot 10 \cdot 10 = 400$ combinations. However, this includes $000,$ so this number must be diminished by $1.$ Therefore, there are $399$ valid $n$ corresponding to those $399$ positive integers less than $1000$ that consist of only numeric digits. (Notice that $399$ is the least hexadecimal number using only decimal digits before $3E8$ .) Therefore, our answer is $3 + 9 + 9 = \boxed{\textbf{(E) } 21}$

2015 AMC 10A (Problems • Answer Key • Resources)
Preceded by Problem 17	Followed by Problem 19
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2015 AMC 10A Problems/Problem 18

Problem 18

Solution

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