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The sum of all the digits of the positive integer q is equal to the three-digit number x13. If q = 10n – 49, what is the value of n?

  • a)
    24

  • b)
    25

  • c)
    26

  • d)
    27

  • e)
    28

Correct answer is option 'B'. Can you explain this answer?
Verified Answer
The sum of all the digits of the positive integer q is equal to the th...
We are first told that the sum of all the digits of the number q is equal to the three-digit number x13. Then we are told that the number q itself is equal to 10n - 49. Finally, we are asked for the value of n. 


The first step is to recognize that  10n - 49 will have to equal a series of 9's ending with a 5 and a 1 (99951, for example, is 105 - 49 ). So q is a series of 9's ending with a 5 and a 1. Since the sum of all the digits of q is equal to x13, we know that x13 is the sum of all those 9's plus 5 plus 1. So if we subtract 5 and 1 from x13, we are left with x07. 


This three-digit number x07 is the sum of all the 9's alone. So x07 must be a multiple of 9. For any multiple of 9, the sum of all the digits of that multiple must itself be a multiple of 9 (for example, 585 = (9)(65) and 5 + 8 + 5 = 18, which is a multiple of 9). So it must be true that x + 0 + 7 is a multiple of 9. The only single-digit value for x that will yield a multiple of 9 when added to 0 and 7 is 2. Therefore, x = 2 and the sum of all the 9's in q is 207. 


Since 207 is a multiple of 9, we can set up the equation 9y = 207, where y is a positive integer.  Solving for y, we get y = 23. So we know q consists of a series of twenty-three 9's followed by a 5 and a 1: 9999999999999999999999951. If we add 49 to this number, we get 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. 


Since the exponent in every power of 10 represents the number of zeroes (e.g.,102 = 100  , which has two zeroes;  103=1000 which has three zeroes, etc.), we must be dealing with  1025. Thus n = 25.


The correct answer is B.
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Most Upvoted Answer
The sum of all the digits of the positive integer q is equal to the th...
We can start by writing out the information we have:

- The sum of all the digits of q is x13.
- q is a multiple of 10n.

Let's first focus on the second piece of information. If q is a multiple of 10n, that means it has n zeroes at the end. For example, if n=3, then q could be 1000, 2000, 3000, and so on. We don't know exactly what q is, but we do know that it ends in n zeroes.

Now let's look at the first piece of information. The sum of all the digits of q is x13. This means that if we add up all the digits of q, we get a number that ends in 13. For example, if q was 123456789, the sum of its digits would be 1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9 = 45, which ends in 13.

So how can we use these two pieces of information to find q? Well, let's think about what the sum of the digits of q can be. The smallest possible sum is 1 (if q is just 1), and the largest possible sum is 9n (if q is a string of n nines, such as 999 if n=3). But we know that the sum of the digits of q ends in 13, so we can narrow down the possibilities.

For example, if n=3, then the sum of the digits of q could be 13, 23, 33, 43, 53, 63, 73, or 83. We can eliminate some of these possibilities based on what q is a multiple of. For example, if the sum of the digits of q is 13, then q could be 10, 100, 1000, etc. But q can't be 10, because that's not a multiple of 1000. So we can eliminate the possibility of the sum of the digits of q being 13.

Continuing in this way, we can narrow down the possibilities for the sum of the digits of q based on what q is a multiple of. Eventually, we'll end up with just one possibility for the sum of the digits of q, and we can use that to find q. For example, if we find that the sum of the digits of q must be 83, then we can start trying out multiples of 1000 that add up to 83: 2999, 3998, 4997, etc. We can check each one to see if it works, and eventually we'll find the right q (in this case, it's 4997).
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