2017 AMC 12B Problem 25
Attempt Problem 25 of the 2017 AMC 12B below, then check your answer against the professionally curated solution from LIVE by Po-Shen Loh. You can also try the full timed exam, view all 2017 AMC 12B solutions, or check the answer key.
All problems are used with official legal permission of the Mathematical Association of America (MAA).
25.
A set of people participate in an online video basketball tournament. Each person may be a member of any number of -player teams, but no two teams may have exactly the same members. The site statistics show a curious fact: The average, over all subsets of size of the set of participants, of the number of complete teams whose members are among those people is equal to the reciprocal of the average, over all subsets of size of the set of participants, of the number of complete teams whose members are among those people. How many values can be the number of participants?
Answer: D
Solution:
Let be the number of teams. Summing over size- subsets counts each team times and over size- subsets times. The averages are and setting the first equal to the reciprocal of the second and simplifying gives We need this to be a positive integer with Let as a product of five consecutive integers, is always divisible by The condition holds for residues modulo holds for residues modulo and holds for residues modulo The Chinese Remainder Theorem therefore gives solutions modulo So there are values in removing (which are below ) and adding (since ) gives valid values.
Thus, the correct answer is D.
Problem 25 in Other Years
1999 AMC 12 · 2000 AMC 12 · 2001 AMC 12 · 2002 AMC 12A · 2002 AMC 12B · 2003 AMC 12A · 2003 AMC 12B · 2004 AMC 12A · 2004 AMC 12B · 2005 AMC 12A · 2005 AMC 12B · 2006 AMC 12A · 2006 AMC 12B · 2007 AMC 12A · 2007 AMC 12B · 2008 AMC 12A · 2008 AMC 12B · 2009 AMC 12A · 2009 AMC 12B · 2010 AMC 12A · 2010 AMC 12B · 2011 AMC 12A · 2011 AMC 12B · 2012 AMC 12A · 2012 AMC 12B · 2013 AMC 12A · 2013 AMC 12B · 2014 AMC 12A · 2014 AMC 12B · 2015 AMC 12A · 2015 AMC 12B · 2016 AMC 12A · 2016 AMC 12B · 2017 AMC 12A · 2018 AMC 12A · 2018 AMC 12B · 2019 AMC 12A · 2019 AMC 12B · 2020 AMC 12A · 2020 AMC 12B · 2021 AMC 12A Spring · 2021 AMC 12B Spring · 2021 AMC 12A Fall · 2021 AMC 12B Fall · 2022 AMC 12A · 2022 AMC 12B · 2023 AMC 12A · 2023 AMC 12B · 2024 AMC 12A · 2024 AMC 12B · 2025 AMC 12A · 2025 AMC 12B