A printer numbers the pages of a book starting with 1 and uses 3189 digits in all. How many pages does the book have ?
Note: Each page has only 1 number on it.
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1 − digit ⇒ There are 9 such numbers ⇒ Total number of digits = 9
2 − digit ⇒ There are 90 such numbers ⇒ Total number of digits = 1 8 0
3 − digit ⇒ There are 900 such numbers ⇒ Total number of digits = 2 7 0 0
⋮
So if the printer printed up to page 999, it would have printed 9 + 1 8 0 + 2 7 0 0 = 2 8 8 9 digits.
But since we want to find out which number corresponds to 3 1 8 9 digits, we subtract them:
3 1 8 9 − 2 8 8 9 = 3 0 0 ⇒ This is total number of digits on pages that are numbered with 4 digits
3 0 0 ÷ 4 = 7 5 ⇒ This is the number of pages with 4 digits
And since the 7 5 t h 4 digit number is 1074, there are 1 0 7 4 pages in total.