150 Followers Question

Probability Level pending

How many 3-element subsets of 1 , 2 , 3 , , 11 , 12 , 13 {1, 2, 3, \ldots , 11, 12, 13} are there for which the sum of the 3 elements is divisible by 3?

97 100 99 98

This section requires Javascript.
You are seeing this because something didn't load right. We suggest you, (a) try refreshing the page, (b) enabling javascript if it is disabled on your browser and, finally, (c) loading the non-javascript version of this page . We're sorry about the hassle.

1 solution

We group the numbers into three groups. The first group contains the numbers which are 1 mod 3, this group contains 5 numbers. The second group contains the numbers which are 2 mod 3, this group contains 4 numbers. The third group contains numbers which are divisible by 3, this group contains 4 numbers. To get a sum that is 0 modulo 3, the numbers can be (1,2,0), (0,0,0), (1,1,1) or (2,2,2). The numbers in the brackets represent the modulo 3 of each individual number and the order does not matter. Thus, the answer is simply 5 4 4 + 2 ( 4 3 ) + ( 5 3 ) = 98 5\cdot4\cdot4+2\left(\begin{array}{c}4\\ 3\end{array}\right)+\left(\begin{array}{c}5\\ 3\end{array}\right)=98

0 pending reports

×

Problem Loading...

Note Loading...

Set Loading...