Takes me back to 2012

Given that 1006 positive integers all of which are different from each other sum up to 1019057 and also that none of them exceed 2012, find the minimum number of these integers which must be odd?


The answer is 3.

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3 solutions

Benjamin Wong
Jul 27, 2014

If you try all even, you will find that (2+2012)*1006/2=(1000+6)(1000+7)

=1000000+13000+42=1013042.

This is 6015 short. When you move 2,4,6 to 2007,2009,2011 you make it.

3

exactly the same way as I did

Kartik Sharma - 6 years, 10 months ago

How I solved it as well.

Lawrence Pang - 6 years, 10 months ago

solved in exactly similar way

Shriram Lokhande - 6 years, 9 months ago
Alex Wang
Aug 12, 2014

There are 1006 even numbers from 2 to 2012. The sum of the numbers is 1006*1007.

The remaining odd numbers must add up to 1019057-1013042=6015. 6015/3=2005 so the three numbers must have an average of 2005.

We can exchange some of the even numbers with odd numbers to attain our condition. 2005+2, 2005+4, 2005+6 or 2007, 2009, and 2011.

First, lets try to see what happens when we try to form this without any odd numbers.

sum(range(2,2013,2))

The sum of all the even numbers between 1 and 2012 inclusive is 1013042 1013042 which is 6015 6015 less than 1019057.

Note that we now have filled all the 1006 slots with even numbers. To increase the sum, we must remove some of the even numbers and replace them with odd numbers.

Factorise 6015.

factor(6015)

6015 = 2005 × 3 6015 = 2005 \times 3 Wow! Inserting 2005 three times will do the trick. We cannot however take 2005 three times. (Since all the 1006 ints are distinct.) Instead we should notice that 2005 = 2011 6 = 2009 4 = 2007 2 2005=2011-6=2009-4=2007-2

Hence, the only set that satisfies this condition is

P P As you see, we need three odd numbers.

Please vote up if you liked this

Although it does not affect the answer as the question wants the minimum of odds, you have overlooked that 6015 in fact factors into 3 \times 5 \times 401

6015 \equals 5 \times 1203

6015 \equals 15 \times 401

This means that more such sets exists, with 5, 15, 401, and 1203 odds respectively. (Each of them has many subsets which I won't write out.)

Benjamin Wong - 6 years, 10 months ago

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Can those sets be achieved?

Agnishom Chattopadhyay - 6 years, 10 months ago

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