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Problem 150

AMC 10/12, early questions

Combinatorics Difficulty 3.4 Find the answer

Find the number of ways $66$ identical coins can be separated into three nonempty piles so that there are fewer coins in the first pile than in the second pile and fewer coins in the second pile than in the third pile.

Your answer

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

Official solution

Suppose we have $1$ coin in the first pile. Then $(1, 2, 63), (1, 3, 62), \ldots, (1, 32, 33)$ all work for a total of $31$ piles. Suppose we have $2$ coins in the first pile, then $(2, 3, 61), (2, 4, 60), \ldots, (2, 31, 33)$ all work, for a total of $29$ . Continuing this pattern until $21$ coins in the first pile, we have the sum
$\begin{align*} 31+29+28+26+25+\cdots+4+2+1 &= (31+28+25+22+\cdots+1)+(29+26+23+\cdots+2) \\ &= 176+155 \\ &= \boxed{331}. \end{align*}$

Source: NuminaMath-1.5, licensed Apache-2.0. Statement reproduced verbatim; metadata (topic, difficulty, ordering) added by this project.