2016 AMC 10A Problem 14

Below is the professionally curated solution for Problem 14 of the 2016 AMC 10A, from LIVE by Po-Shen Loh. You can also try the full timed exam, view all 2016 AMC 10A solutions, or check the answer key.

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Concepts:Diophantine Equationparity

Difficulty rating: 1280

14.

How many ways are there to write 20162016 as the sum of twos and threes, ignoring order? (For example, 10082+031008\cdot 2 + 0\cdot 3 and 4022+4043402\cdot 2 + 404\cdot 3 are two such ways.)

236236

336336

337337

403403

672672

Solution:

The problem can be rewritten as an equation 2x+3y=2016,2x + 3y = 2016, where xx is the number of twos and yy is the number of threes.

The goal is to find the number of multiples of 33 that can be subtracted from 2016 to result in an even number.

This can be achieved by the pairs of (1008,0)(1008, 0) up to (0,672)(0, 672) with yy being incremented by 2.2.

This gives us 6722+1=337\dfrac{672}{2} + 1 = 337 solutions for yy and x.x.

Thus, the correct answer is C .

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