2019 AMC 8 Problems/Problem 25
Contents
[hide]Problem 25
Alice has apples. In how many ways can she share them with Becky and Chris so that each of the three people has at least two apples?
Solution 1
We use stars and bars. Let Alice get apples, let Becky get apples, let Chris get apples. We can manipulate this into an equation which can be solved using stars and bars.
All of them get at least apples, so we can subtract from , from , and from . Let , let , let . We can allow either of them to equal to ; hence, this can be solved by stars and bars.
By Stars and Bars, our answer is just .
Solution 2 (Answer Choices)
Consider an unordered triple where and are not necessarily distinct. Then, we will either have , , or distinguishable ways to assign , , and to Alice, Becky, and Chris. Thus, our answer will be for some nonnegative integers . Notice that we only have way to assign the numbers to Alice, Becky, and Chris when . As this only happens way (), our answer is for some . Finally, notice that this implies the answer is mod . The only answer choice that satisfies this is .
-BorealBear
Solution 3
Since each person needs to have at least two apples, we can simply give each person two, leaving apples. For the remaining apples, if Alice is going to have apples, Becky is going to have apples, and Chris is going to have apples, we have indeterminate equation . Currently, we can see that where is an integer, and when equals any number in the range, there will be sets of values for and . Thus, there are possible sets of values in total.
Video Solution by OmegaLearn
https://youtu.be/5UojVH4Cqqs?t=5131
~ pi_is_3.14
Video Solution by The Power of Logic(Problem 1 to 25 Full Solution)
~Hayabusa1
Video Solutions
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJzSOPXULBc
- Happytwin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJ7uvypbB28
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dBUklyUaNI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qp0wTq-LI0&list=PLLCzevlMcsWNBsdpItBT4r7Pa8cZb6Viu&index=7
~ MathEx
~savannahsolver
See Also
The problems on this page are copyrighted by the Mathematical Association of America's American Mathematics Competitions.