2018 AMC 8 Problems/Problem 5

Revision as of 13:26, 9 November 2020 by Xintong li (talk | contribs) (Solution 2)

Problem 5

What is the value of $1+3+5+\cdots+2017+2019-2-4-6-\cdots-2016-2018$?

$\textbf{(A) }-1010\qquad\textbf{(B) }-1009\qquad\textbf{(C) }1008\qquad\textbf{(D) }1009\qquad \textbf{(E) }1010$

Solution 1

Rearranging the terms, we get $(1-2)+(3-4)+(5-6)+...(2017-2018)+2019$, and our answer is $-1009+2019=\boxed{1010}, \textbf{(E)}$

Solution 2

We can see that the last numbers of each of the sets (even numbers and odd numbers) have a difference of two. So do the second last ones, and so on. Now, all we need to find is the number of integers in any of the sets (I chose even) to get $\boxed{\textbf{(E) }1010}$ ~avamarora

See Also

2018 AMC 8 (ProblemsAnswer KeyResources)
Preceded by
Problem 4
Followed by
Problem 6
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
All AJHSME/AMC 8 Problems and Solutions

The problems on this page are copyrighted by the Mathematical Association of America's American Mathematics Competitions. AMC logo.png