2016 AIME I Problems/Problem 5

Problem 5

Anh read a book. On the first day she read $n$ pages in $t$ minutes, where $n$ and $t$ are positive integers. On the second day Anh read $n + 1$ pages in $t + 1$ minutes. Each day thereafter Anh read one more page than she read on the previous day, and it took her one more minute than on the previous day until she completely read the $374$ page book. It took her a total of $319$ minutes to read the book. Find $n + t$ .

Solution

Let $d$ be the number of days Anh reads for. Because the difference between the number of pages and minutes Anh reads for each day stays constant and is an integer, $d$ must be a factor of the total difference, which is $374-319=55$ . Also note that the number of pages Anh reads is $dn+\frac{d(d-1)}{2}$ . Similarly, the number of minutes she reads for is $dt+\frac{d(d-1)}{2}$ . When $d$ is odd (which it must be), both of these numbers are multiples of $d$ . Therefore, $d$ must be a factor of $55$ , $319$ , and $374$ . The only such numbers are $1$ and $11$ . We know that Anh reads for at least $2$ days. Therefore, $d=11$ .

Using this, we find that she reads $55$ "additional" pages and $55$ "additional" minutes. Therefore, $n=\frac{374-55}{11}=29$ , while $t=\frac{319-55}{11}=24$ . The answer is therefore $29+24=\fbox{053}$ .

Solution 2

We could see that both $374$ and $319$ are divisible by $11$ in the outset, and that $34$ and $29$ , the quotients, are relatively prime. Both are the $average$ number of minutes across the $11$ days, so we need to subtract $\left \lfloor{\frac{11}{2}}\right \rfloor=5$ from each to get $(n,t)=(29,24)$ and $29+24=\boxed{053}$ .

2016 AIME I (Problems • Answer Key • Resources)
Preceded by Problem 4	Followed by Problem 6
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2016 AIME I Problems/Problem 5

Contents

Problem 5

Solution

Solution 2

See also