Problem 1: Is it Number Theory?

A school with 100 students offers French and Spanish as its language courses.
Twice as many students are in the French class as the Spanish class. Three
times as many students are in both classes as are in neither class. The number
of students in both classes is even, and fewer than 10 students are in neither
class. How many students are taking Spanish?

Solution:
Let F , S, B, and N be the nonnegative integer number of students in French
class (only), Spanish class (only), both classes, and neither class, respectively.
Then our conditions will be represented as:

F + S + B + N = 100

2(S + B) = F + B
3N = B
B = 2k
N < 10
Adding the first two equations, we get

F + 3S + 3B + N = 100 + F + B

3S + 2B + N = 100
From the third equation, we have

3S + 2(3N ) + N = 100

3S + 7N = 100
Our fourth equation shows that the RHS (right hand side) of the third equa-
tion is even. Therefore, the LHS (left hand side) must also be even. Since 3
is an odd number, then N must be even to make our LHS even. The values
that N can take are now reduced to 0, 2, 4, 6, and 8 (since N must be even
and less than 10). The only value of N that produces an integer value of S
(i.e., the value of N that will make 100 − 7N divisible by 3) is 4.

1
If N is 4, then S is equal to

100 − 7(4)
= 24
3
The number of students taking Spanish is equal to S + B or S + 3N (since
B = 3N ). Therefore, our answer is 24 + 3(4) = 36.