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October 2011 paper

This is the introductory paper of the season - they will be produced every month up to June 2012 inclusive.
Some questions are devised to help you learn aspects of mathematics which you may not meet in school.
Hints are upside down at the bottom of the page; fold the page back to view them when needed.
There are also a set of notes on various topics included with the mailing of this paper.

1 To make ‘short’ pastry one uses flour to fat (butter, margarine, etc.) in the ratio 2 : 1. To make ‘flaky’
pastry requires a ratio 4 : 3. I have 3 kg of flour and 2 kg of fat and wish to use all the ingredients
making some of each type of pastry. How much flaky pastry do I make?

2 What is the 2011th character in the sequence ABCDEDCBABCDEDCBABCDEDCBAB…?


3 A polygon of 100 sides has all possible diagonals drawn from a chosen vertex to the others. How
many triangles are formed? What is the sum of the interior angles of the 100 sided polygon?
4 Write down the units digits of all the square numbers from 1² to at least 20².
How can you tell that 573 is not a square number?
5 The exterior angles of a triangle are in the ratio 4 : 5 : 6.
What is the least (interior) angle of the triangle?
6 You tell your friend that there is the same chance of obtaining an even number of heads when tossing
four coins as of a head showing when tossing just one coin.
She doesn’t believe you; how do you convince her?
7 In a quadrilateral ABCD, side AB = side BC = diagonal CA = 2 and side AD = 1. D is located so that a
circle using diagonal BD as a diameter will pass through A. Prove that BD = Ö 5.
8 p and q are two prime numbers chosen so that p + q and p - q are also prime.
Prove that p² - q is a prime number.
9 Work out the day of the week for 14 Sep 1752, the first day of the new calendar in England when an
Act of Parliament brought the calendar into alignment with the Gregorian calendar used in most of
Western Europe by that time.
[Leap years occur every 4 years with the exception that every 100th year is not a leap year but every 400th year is a leap
year. Look up Gregorian calendar on Wikipedia.]

10 Construct a sequence of five single digit positive integers a, b, c, d, e so that :


b divides a + b but a does not do so;
c divides a + b + c but a and b do not do so;
d divides a + b + c + d but a, b and c do not do so;
e divides a + b + c + d + e but a, b, c and d do not do so;
[Taken from ‘Enigma’ in New Scientist, 23 Jul 2011.]

2/4/9 It all depends on remainders after division. The methods are similar, qu 4 counting in 10s and qu 9 counting in 7s.
For more notes go to http://www.ukmt.org.uk/ : follow links Mentoring>Junior>Modular Arithmetic at NRICH
3 You may know a rule for this but use this question to prove it for yourself.
5 The exterior angle of a triangle is that between a side and its neighbour extended externally.
6 Work out all the ways you can arrange 4 coins in a row, each showing a head or a tail. Remember 0 is an even number.
7 Always make a drawing which is fairly accurate when doing geometry. NB: Is all the data needed to solve the problem?
8 You can work out the values of p and q but you should justify your answers.
10 There are a number of possibilities for a and b but these get reduced as you try to fit successively c, d and e.

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