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A comment on Are You Smarter Than a Quant? Questions from the MoMath Masters Contest. Parent comment

Re:Are You Smarter Than a Quant? Questions from the MoMath M... by danbruc on Friday March 04, 2016 @02:47PM (#11226396)
The last one is trivial, too. Is 8 x 8 + 7 x 8 + 89 = 209 divisible by 77? Nope. Is 18 x 18 + 7 x 18 + 89 = 539 divisible by 77? Yes, gives 7, solved it. This isn't even worth trying to look for a more analytical solution.
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Re:Are You Smarter Than a Quant? Questions from the MoMath M... by OscarCunningham on Friday March 04, 2016 @03:37PM (#11226699)
But since I didn't know in advance that the solution would be one of the smaller possible answers it was faster in expectation to solve the problem using the given method.
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Re:Are You Smarter Than a Quant? Questions from the MoMath M... by tromp on Friday March 04, 2016 @03:56PM (#11226797)
The question at the actual competition was slightly more subtle: it asked for m modulo 10.

So it would have taken rather more tries to find 18...

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