What is the average (mean) of all 5-digit numbers that can be formed by using each of the digits 1, 3, 5, 7, 8 and exactly once?
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.
Let us look at all such numbers starting in 1 : there are 4 ! such numbers, and so the sum of all the first (leftmost) digits is 4 ! × 1 .
By a similar argument, the sum of all the n th digits of all such numbers with k ∈ { 1 , 3 , 5 , 7 , 8 } in the n th place is 4 ! × 1 0 n − 1 k .
Altogether, there are 5 ! such numbers.
Hence, the average is
5 ! 1 n = 1 ∑ 5 4 ! × 1 0 n − 1 k = 5 1 1 1 1 1 + 3 3 3 3 3 + 5 5 5 5 5 + 7 7 7 7 7 + 8 8 8 8 8 = 5 3 3 3 2 . 8
Problem Loading...
Note Loading...
Set Loading...
Since all digits are used exactly once in each number, the possible arrangements of the digits will result with all the numbers in each digit place the same amount of times. Therefore, the averages of each digit place will be the same. These averages can be calculated by adding up the digits and dividing the sum by 5. The resulting sum is 4.8. When entered into each digit place, 48000 + 4800 + 480 +48 +4.8 = 53332.8 is found to be the answer.