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Difficulty: 4/102023 NMTC 2023 (QII-45)

A girl wrote all the numbers from 100 to 200. Then she started counting the number of one's that has been used while writing all these numbers. What is the number that she got?

Guide / Hint

Hint 1: Break down the count of 1's by digit positions: hundreds place, tens place, and units place.

Hint 2: Count the occurrences in the range (the hundreds place has exactly 100 ones).

Hint 3: Count the occurrences in the tens place (10 ones in ) and units place (10 ones: 101, 111, ..., 191).

Solution

Step 1 (Formulate digit position analysis): The girl wrote all integers from 100 to 200. To count the total number of 1's used, we analyze the occurrence of 1 in each digit position:

  • Case 1: Hundreds Place ():

The digit 1 appears in the hundreds place in all numbers from to . There are exactly 100 numbers in this range. For the number 200, the hundreds digit is 2. Total = 100.

  • Case 2: Tens Place ():

The digit 1 appears in the tens place in numbers of the form to . There are exactly 10 such numbers. Total = 10.

  • Case 3: Units Place ():

The digit 1 appears in the units place in numbers of the form . There are exactly 10 such numbers. Total = 10.

Step 2 (Sum the digit counts): We add the three counts together:

Step 3 (Conclusion): The number of ones used is exactly 120.

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    2023 NMTC 2023 QII-45 - Olympiad Math Olympiad Question | Leminno