Maths Olympiad Prep

Track / Stage 3 / 227 of 260 #227 of 1964

Problem 227

AMC 10/12, early questions
Number theory Difficulty 3.8 Find the answer South African Mathematics Olympiad · South Africa

How many pairs of non-negative integers xx and yy are solutions of x20+y15=1\frac{x}{20} + \frac{y}{15} = 1?

A number or a short expression. Fractions can be typed as 3/2, and spacing doesn't matter.

Next problem →

Official solution

6

We can re-write x20+y15=1\frac{x}{20} + \frac{y}{15} = 1 in the form 3x+4y=603x + 4y = 60. Then we can see that 3x3x must be divisible by 44, so xx must be, and trying successive possible values we see that only the following combinations of xx- and yy-values are acceptable: (0;15)(0; 15), (4;12)(4; 12), (8;9)(8; 9), (12;6)(12; 6), (16;3)(16; 3), (20;0)(20; 0).

Source: MathNet, licensed CC-BY-4.0. Statement reproduced verbatim; metadata (topic, difficulty, ordering) added by this project.