Republic of the Philippines

PARTIDO STATE UNIVERSITY

Camarines Sur

MATHED13 |Problem Solving, Mathematical Investigation, and Modeling

Assessment Task
Invariance Principle
Name Queennie Mae P. Sierra Course/Year/Major BSEd Mathematics 3A

Instruction: Solve the following problems by applying the invariance Principle. Make your
solution clear and complete.

Problem 1:

Demonstrate that if 25 participants participate in a ping pong tournament, the number of people who
played an even number of games at the end of the tournament is odd.
Solution:

Each game involves two participants. If n1 is the number of games played by the ith player,and n is
the total number of games played, then we have n1 + n2 +...+n 25 = 2n. Since the sum of n1 +
n2 +...+n 25 = 2n is even, then the numbers n must be odd. The odd number n multiply by 2 will be
even. Therefore, the number of players who played an even number of games at the end of the
tournament is odd.

Problem 2:
Assume a piece of paper has 1 to 1000 numbers printed on it. At each step, we pick two integers at
random and replace them with the difference between them. Is it feasible that 243 will be the last
number left in the end?

Solution:
243 is an odd number, and considering the parity (odd and even) of the integers, the difference
between any two integers (either odd - even, odd - odd, even - even, or even - odd) will result in
an even number. This means that the parity of the numbers will remain odd. As the process
continues, the remaining number will always be odd. Since 243 is an odd number, it cannot be
the last number left.
Therefore, it is not feasible that 243 will be the last number left in the end.

Problem 3:

Show that in a house with 25 rooms, if every room has an odd number of doors, then there must be
an odd number of doors along the outside wall of the house.

Solution:
We suppose that only doors between two rooms and doors along the outside wall are being
counted, so for example closet doors do not count. Since, there are 25 rooms and each room has
an odd number of doors, then the number of doors in the house is an odd number.
Considering the number of doors along the outside wall of the house each room in the house has
at least one door along the outside wall.
Assumption: There is an even number of doors along the outside wall, then the total number of doors in
the house would be even.
However, it is already stated that the number of doors in the house is an odd number. Therefore,
there must be an odd number of doors along the outside wall of the house.

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