2010 AMC 10B Problems/Problem 17
Problem
Every high school in the city of Euclid sent a team of students to a math contest. Each participant in the contest received a different score. Andrea's score was the median among all students, and hers was the highest score on her team. Andrea's teammates Beth and Carla placed th and th, respectively. How many schools are in the city?
Solution
Let the be the number of schools, be the number of contestants, and be Andrea's place. Since the number of participants divided by three is the number of schools, . Andrea received a higher score than her teammates, so . Since is the maximum possible median, then is the maximum possible number of participants. Therefore, . This yields the compound inequality: . Since a set with an even number of elements has a median that is the average of the two middle terms, an occurrence that cannot happen in this situation, cannot be even. is the only other option.
See Also
2010 AMC 10B (Problems • Answer Key • Resources) | ||
Preceded by Problem 16 |
Followed by Problem 18 | |
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