Re:Many elementary teachers don’t understand math, and it ma...
by chongli on Saturday November 30, 2019 @02:11PM
(#21671634)
That’s a very good solution. Thanks.
I began with n being the largest of the sum so that 11n - 55 = 2012 + k. I solved for k in terms of n and then used an inequality to find n which gave me k.
Now I see that the method I used relies on math beyond elementary school, which makes the problem a bit more complicated than it ought to be. On the other hand, the elementary school only method relies on the fact that you have 10 numbers remaining and so you can easily see the remainder. It wouldn’t generalize as well, especially in cases where there may be multiple solutions and you’re asked to find all of them.
I began with n being the largest of the sum so that 11n - 55 = 2012 + k. I solved for k in terms of n and then used an inequality to find n which gave me k.
Now I see that the method I used relies on math beyond elementary school, which makes the problem a bit more complicated than it ought to be. On the other hand, the elementary school only method relies on the fact that you have 10 numbers remaining and so you can easily see the remainder. It wouldn’t generalize as well, especially in cases where there may be multiple solutions and you’re asked to find all of them.