Problems

Age
Difficulty
Found: 1967

A conference was attended by a finite group of scientists, some of whom are friends. It turned out that every two scientists, who have an equal number of friends at the conference, do not have friends in common. Prove that there is a scientist who has exactly one friend among the conference attendees.

Peter bought an automatic machine at the store, which for 5 pence multiplies any number entered into it by 3, and for 2 pence adds 4 to any number. Peter wants, starting with a unit that can be entered free of charge to get the number 1981 on the machine number whilst spending the smallest amount of money. How much will the calculations cost him? What happens if he wants to get the number 1982?

The tracks in a zoo form an equilateral triangle, in which the middle lines are drawn. A monkey ran away from its cage. Two guards try to catch the monkey. Will they be able to catch the monkey if all three of them can run only along the tracks, and the speed of the monkey and the speed of the guards are equal and they can always see each other?

The judges of an Olympiad decided to denote each participant with a natural number in such a way that it would be possible to unambiguously reconstruct the number of points received by each participant in each task, and that from each two participants the one with the greater number would be the participant which received a higher score. Help the judges solve this problem!

In March 2015 a teacher ran 11 sessions of a maths club. Prove that if no sessions were run on Saturdays or Sundays there must have been three days in a row where a session of the club did not take place. The 1st March 2015 was a Sunday.

Prove that from any 27 different natural numbers less than 100, two numbers that are not coprime can be chosen.

In a dark room on a shelf there are 4 pairs of socks of two different sizes and two different colours that are not arranged in pairs. What is the minimum number of socks necessary to move from the drawer to the suitcase, without leaving the room, so that there are two pairs of socks of different sizes and colours in the suitcase?

A council of 2,000 deputies decided to approve a state budget containing 200 items of expenditure. Each deputy prepared his draft budget, which indicated for each item the maximum allowable, in his opinion, amount of expenditure, ensuring that the total amount of expenditure did not exceed the set value of \(S\). For each item, the board approves the largest amount of expenditure that is agreed to be allocated by no fewer than \(k\) deputies. What is the smallest value of \(k\) for which we can ensure that the total amount of approved expenditures does not exceed \(S\)?

Izzy wrote a correct equality on the board: \(35 + 10 - 41 = 42 + 12 - 50\), and then subtracted 4 from both parts: \(35 + 10 - 45 = 42 + 12 - 54\). She noticed that on the left hand side of the equation all of the numbers are divisible by 5, and on the right hand side by 6. Then she took 5 outside of the brackets on the left hand side and 6 on the right hand side and got \(5(7 + 2 - 9)4 = 6(7 + 2 - 9)\). Having simplified both sides by a common multiplier, Izzy found that \(5 = 6\). Where did she go wrong?