A class of 10 students was asked for the number of days each week that they play video games. They each gave an integer answer. The smallest answer is 2 and the largest answer is 7. Teresa the Teacher realized that the mean, mode and median are all equal to 3.
What are these 10 numbers? Enter your answer as these values arranged in increasing order and then concatenated. For example, if you think the values are 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 6, 7, then enter the answer of 2233445567.
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Since the mode is 3 we know that there is at least one occurrence of the value 3 . Next, since there are 10 students, the median will be the average of the 5th and 6th values going from lowest to highest. This can occur if these values were ( 2 , 4 ) or ( 3 , 3 ) , but if it were the first of these then the possibility of a value of 3 would be ruled out. Thus the middle two values are 3 .
So let the ascending sequence of values be 2 , a , b , c , 3 , 3 , d , e , f , 7 , (as we are given that values of 2 and 7 definitely occur). Then as the mean must also be 3 we must have that
1 0 2 + a + b + c + 3 + 3 + d + e + f + 7 = 3 ⟹ a + b + c + d + e + f = 1 5 ,
where 2 ≤ a ≤ b ≤ c ≤ 3 and 3 ≤ d ≤ e ≤ f ≤ 7 . But as the minimum value we can (uniquely) achieve under these conditions is 2 + 2 + 2 + 3 + 3 + 3 = 1 5 we must have a = b = c = 2 and d = e = f = 3 .
The desired concatenation is thus 2 2 2 2 3 3 3 3 3 7 .