School Visit Problem Set

The problems ascend from easy-warm up problems to very more difficult problems. Often
times, solutions can be accomplished by brute force there is often an elegant approach.
p
1. A fraction is in its lowest term if p and q have no common factor greater than one.
q
How many fractions of the 71 fractions
1 2 3 71
, , , ....
72 72 72 72
are in their lowest terms?

2. Three circles with radius 2 are mutually tangent. What is the total area of the circles
and the region bounded by them, as shown in the figure?

3. A teacher says: I am thinking of two natural numbers bigger than 1. Try to guess
what they are.
The first student knows their product and the second student know their sum.

First: I do not know the sum.

Second: I knew that. The sum is less than 14.
First: I knew that. However, now I already know the numbers.
Second: And so do I.

What were the two numbers?

4. The Thief The famous Blue Diamond was stolen from a museum. A thief swapped it
for a cheap green imitation diamond. The day it was stolen, 2000 people entered the
diamond room one by one. Inspector Bebro must find the thief by interviewing some
of these people. He has a list of all 2000 people in the order they entered the room.
The only question he can ask a person is:

1
 School Visit Problem Set

Was the diamond green or blue when you saw it?

The thief will lie and say green but everyone else will tell the truth.
Inspector Bebro is very clever and will use a strategy where the number of people
interviewed is as small as possible.
What is the number of people the inspector interviews?
Hint: It is not 2000

5. Andrea and Lauren are 20 kilometers apart. They bike toward one another with Andrea
traveling three times as fast as Lauren, and the distance between them decreasing at
a rate of 1 kilometer per minute. After 5 minutes, Andrea stops biking because of a
flat tire and waits for Lauren. After how many minutes from the time they started to
bike does Lauren reach Andrea?

6. How many ways are there to write 2016 as the sum of twos and threes, ignoring order?
(For example, 1008 2 + 0 3 and 402 2 + 404 3 are two such ways.)

7. The addition shown below, representing 2 + 22 + 222 + 2222 + , has 101 rows and
the last term consists of 101 2s:

(a) Determine the value of the ones digit A .

(b) Determine the value of the tens digit B and the value of the hundreds digit C.
(c) Determine the middle digit of the sum.

2
22
222
..
.
+ |2 2 .{z. . 2 2}
101 twos