1983 AIME

1. Let , , and all exceed , and let be a positive number such that
, , and . Find . Ans. 60
2. Let , where . Determine
the minimum value taken by for in the interval . Ans. 15
3. What is the product of the real roots of
the equation ? Ans. 20
4. A machine shop cutting tool is in the shape of a notched circle, as shown.
The radius of the circle is cm, the length of is 6 cm, and that of is 2
cm. The angle is a right angle. Find the square of the distance (in
centimeters) from to the center of the circle.

Ans. 26

5. Suppose that the sum of the squares of two complex numbers and is and the
sum of the cubes is . What is the largest real value that can have? Ans. 4
6. Let equal . Determine the remainder upon dividing by .Ans. 35
7. Twenty five of King Arthur's knights are seated at their customary round table. Three
of them are chosen - all choices being equally likely - and are sent of to slay a
troublesome dragon. Let be the probability that at least two of the three had been
sitting next to each other. If is written as a fraction in lowest terms, what is the
sum of the numerator and the denominator? Ans. 57

8. What is the largest 2-digit prime factor of the integer ? Ans. 61

9. Find the minimum value of for . Ans. 12

10. The numbers , , and have something in common. Each is a four-digit
number beginning with that has exactly two identical digits. How many such
numbers are there? Ans. 432
11. The solid shown has a square base of side length . The upper edge is parallel to the
base and has length . All other edges have length . Given that , what is
the volume of the solid?

Ans. 288

12. The length of diameter is a two digit integer. Reversing the digits gives the
length of a perpendicular chord . The distance from their intersection point to
the center is a positive rational number. Determine the length of .

Ans. 65

13. For and each of its non-empty subsets, an alternating sum is defined
as follows. Arrange the number in the subset in decreasing order and then,
beginning with the largest, alternately add and subtract succesive numbers. For
example, the alternating sum for is and for
it is simply . Find the sum of all such alternating sums for . Ans. 448
 14. In the adjoining figure, two circles with radii and are drawn with their centers
units apart. At , one of the points of intersection, a line is drawn in such a way
that the chords and have equal length. ( is the midpoint of ) Find the
area of the square with a side length of QP.

Ans. 130

15. The adjoining figure shows two intersecting chords in a circle, with on minor
arc . Suppose that the radius of the circle is , that , and that
is bisected by . Suppose further that is the only chord starting at which is
bisected by . It follows that the sine of the minor arc is a rational number. If

this fraction is expressed as a fraction in lowest terms, what is the product ?

Ans. 175

1984 AIME

1. Find the value of if , , is an arithmetic

progression with common difference 1, and .
Ans. 93
2. The integer is the smallest positive multiple of such that every digit of is

either or . Compute . Ans. 592

3. A point is chosen in the interior of such that when lines are drawn
through parallel to the sides of , the resulting smaller triangles , ,
and in the figure, have areas , , and , respectively. Find the area of .

Ans. 144

4. Let be a list of positive integers - not necessarily distinct - in which the number
appears. The arithmetic mean of the numbers in is . However, if is removed,
the arithmetic mean of the numbers is . What's the largest number that can
appear in ? Ans. 649
5. Determine the value of if and .
Ans. 512

6. Three circles, each of radius , are drawn with centers at , ,

and . A line passing through is such that the total area of the parts of
the three circles to one side of the line is equal to the total area of the parts of the
three circles to the other side of it. What is the absolute value of theslope of this
line? Ans. 24
7. The function f is defined on the set of integers and

satisfies Ans. 997

8. The equation has complex roots with argument between
and in the complex plane. Determine the degree measure of . Ans. 160
9. In tetrahedron , edge has length 3 cm. The area of face
is and the area of face is . These two faces meet each other at
a angle. Find the volume of the tetrahedron in . Ans. 20
10. Mary told John her score on the American High School Mathematics Examination
(AHSME), which was over . From this, John was able to determine the number of
problems Mary solved correctly. If Mary's score had been any lower, but still over ,
John could not have determined this. What was Mary's score? (Recall that the
AHSME consists of multiple choice problems and that one's score, , is computed
by the formula , where is the number of correct answers and
is the number of wrong answers. (Students are not penalized for problems left
unanswered.) Ans. 119
11. A gardener plants three maple trees, four oaks, and five birch trees in a row. He

plants them in random order, each arrangement being equally likely. Let in lowest
terms be the probability that no two birch trees are next to one another. Find
. Ans. 106
12. A function is defined for all real numbers and satisfies
and for all . If is a root for , what is the
least number of roots must have in the interval ? Ans.
401
13. Find the value of Ans. 15
14. What is the largest even integer that cannot be written as the sum of two odd
composite numbers? Ans. 38

15.Determine if. Ans. 36

1985 AIME

1. Let , and for , let . Calculate

the product . Ans. 384
2. When a right triangle is rotated about one leg, the volume of the cone produced
is . When the triangle is rotated about the other leg, the volume of the
cone produced is . What is the length (in cm) of the hypotenuse of the
triangle? Ans. 26
3. Find if , , and are positive integers which satisfy ,
where . Ans. 198
4. A small square is constructed inside a square of area 1 by dividing each side of the
unit square into equal parts, and then connecting the vertices to the division
points closest to the opposite vertices. Find the value of if the the area of the

small square is exactly .

Ans. 32

5. A sequence of integers is chosen so that for

each . What is the sum of the first 2001 terms of this sequence if the sum of
the first 1492 terms is 1985, and the sum of the first 1985 terms is 1492? Ans. 986
As shown in the figure, triangle is divided into six smaller triangles
by lines drawn from the vertices through a common interior point. The areas of four
of these triangles are as indicated. Find the area of triangle . Ans. 986

6. As shown in the figure, triangle is divided into six smaller triangles

by lines drawn from the vertices through a common interior point. The areas of four
of these triangles are as indicated. Find the area of
triangle . Ans. 315
7. Assume that , , , and are positive integers such that , ,
and . Determine . Ans. 757
8. The sum of the following seven numbers is exactly 19: ,
, , , , , . It is desired to replace
each by an integer approximation , , so that the sum of the 's is
also 19 and so that , the maximum of the "errors" , the
maximum absolute value of the difference, is as small as possible. For this
minimum , what is ? Ans. 61
9. In a circle, parallel chords of lengths 2, 3, and 4 determine central angles of , ,
and radians, respectively, where . If , which is
apositive rational number, is expressed as a fraction in lowest terms, what is the
sum of its numerator and denominator?

Ans. 49

10.How many of the first 1000 positive integers can be expressed in the form

where is a real number, and denotes the greatest integer less than or equal

to ?

Ans. 600
11. An ellipse has foci at and in the -plane and is tangent to the -axis.

What is the length of its major axis? Ans. 85

12.Let , , and be the vertices of a regular tetrahedron each of whose edges measures

1 meter. A bug, starting from vertex , observes the following rule: at each vertex it chooses

one of the three edges meeting at that vertex, each edge being equally likely to be chosen,

and crawls along that edge to the vertex at its opposite end. Let be

the probability that the bug is at vertex when it has crawled exactly 7 meters. Find the

value of . Ans. 182

13. The numbers in the sequence , , , , are of the

form , where For each , let be the greatest

common divisor of and . Find the maximum value of as ranges

through the positive integers. Ans. 401

14. In a tournament each player played exactly one game against each of the other players. In

each game the winner was awarded 1 point, the loser got 0 points, and each of the two

players earned 1/2 point if the game was a tie. After the completion of the tournament, it was

found that exactly half of the points earned by each player were earned against the ten

players with the least number of points. (In particular, each of the ten lowest scoring players

earned half of her/his points against the other nine of the ten). What was the total number of

players in the tournament? Ans. 25

15.Three 12 cm 12 cm squares are each cut into two pieces and , as shown in the first

figure below, by joining the midpoints of two adjacent sides. These six pieces are then

attached to a regular hexagon, as shown in the second figure, so as to fold into a polyhedron.

What is the volume (in ) of this polyhedron?

Ans. 864
1986 AIME

1. What is the sum of the solutions to the equation ?Ans. 337

2. If and , what is ? Ans. 150

3. Determine if , , , , and satisfy the system of equations below.

Ans. 181
4. What is that largest positive integer for which is divisible by ? Ans. 890
5. The pages of a book are numbered through . When the page numbers of the book were
added, one of the page numbers was mistakenly added twice, resulting in an incorrect sum
of . What was the number of the page that was added twice? Ans. 33
6. The increasing sequence consists of all those positive integers which
are powers of 3 or sums of distinct powers of 3. Find the term of this sequence. Ans.
981
7. Let be the sum of the base logarithms of all the proper divisors (all divisors of a number
excluding itself) of . What is the integer nearest to ? Ans. 141
8. In , , , and . An interior point is then drawn,
and segments are drawn through parallel to the sides of thetriangle. If these three
segments are of an equal length , find .Ans. 306
9. In a parlor game, the magician asks one of the participants to think of a three digit number
(abc) where a, b, and c represent digits in base 10 in the order indicated. The magician then
asks this person to form the numbers (acb), (bca), (bac), (cab), and (cba), to add these
five numbers, and to reveal their sum, . If told the value of , the magician can identify
the original number, (abc). Play the role of the magician and determine the (abc)
if . Ans. 358
10. The polynomial may be written in the
form , where and the 's
areconstants. Find the value of . Ans. 816
11. Let the sum of a set of numbers be the sum of its elements. Let be a set of positive
integers, none greater than 15. Suppose no two disjoint subsets of have the same sum.
What is the largest sum a set with these properties can have? Ans. 61
12. In a sequence of coin tosses, one can keep a record of instances in which a tail is immediately
followed by a head, a head is immediately followed by a head, and etc. We denote these
by TH, HH, and etc. For example, in the sequence TTHHTHTTTHHTTH of 15 coin tosses we
observe that there are two HH, three HT, fourTH, and five TT subsequences. How many
different sequences of 15 coin tosses will contain exactly two HH, three HT, four TH, and
five TT subsequences? Ans. 560
13. The shortest distances between an interior diagonal of a rectangular parallelepiped, , and

the edges it does not meet are , , and . Determine the volume of . Ans.
750
 14. Let triangle be a right triangle in the xy-plane with a right angle at . Given that the

length of the hypotenuse is , and that the medians through and lie along the

lines and respectively, find the area of triangle . Ans. 400

1987 AIME

1. An ordered pair of non-negative integers is called "simple" if the addition in

base requires no carrying. Find the number of simple ordered pairs of non-negative

integers that sum to . Ans. 300

2. What is the largest possible distance between two points, one on the sphere of radius 19

with center and the other on the sphere of radius 87 with center ?

Ans. 137

3. By a proper divisor of a natural number we mean a positive integral divisor other than 1 and

the number itself. A natural number greater than 1 will be callednice if it is equal to the

product of its distinct proper divisors. What is the sum of the first ten nice numbers?Ans. 182

4. Find the area of the region enclosed by the graph of Ans. 480

5. Find if and are integers such that . Ans. 588

6. Rectangle is divided into four parts of equal area by five segments as shown in the

figure, where , and

is parallel to . Find the length of (in cm) if cm and cm.

 Ans. 193

7. Let denote the least common multiple of positive integers and . Find the number

of ordered triples of positive integers for which , ,

and . Ans. 70

8. What is the largest positive integer for which there is a unique integer such

that ? Ans. 112

9. Triangle has right angle at , and contains a point for which ,

, and . Find .

Ans. 33

10. Al walks down to the bottom of an escalator that is moving up and he counts 150 steps. His

friend, Bob, walks up to the top of the escalator and counts 75 steps. If Al's speed of walking

(in steps per unit time) is three times Bob's walking speed, how many steps are visible on the

escalator at a given time? (Assume that this value is constant.) Ans. 120

11. Find the largest possible value of for which is expressible as the sum of

consecutive positive integers. Ans. 486

12. Let be the smallest integer whose cube root is of the form , where is a positive

integer and is a positive real number less than . Find . Ans. 19

13. A given sequence of distinct real numbers can be put in ascending order by

means of one or more "bubble passes". A bubble pass through a given sequence consists of
 comparing the second term with the first term, and exchanging them if and only if the second

term is smaller, then comparing the third term with the second term and exchanging them if

and only if the third term is smaller, and so on in order, through comparing the last term, ,

with its current predecessor and exchanging them if and only if the last term is smaller.

The example below shows how the sequence 1, 9, 8, 7 is transformed into the sequence 1, 8,

7, 9 by one bubble pass. The numbers compared at each step are underlined.

Suppose that , and that the terms of the initial sequence are distinct

from one another and are in random order. Let , in lowest terms, be the probability that

the number that begins as will end up, after one bubble pass, in the place.

Find . Ans. 931

14. Compute

Ans. 373

15. Squares and are inscribed in right triangle , as shown in the figures below.

Find if area and area .

Ans. 462

1988 AIME

1. One commercially available ten-button lock may be opened by depressing -- in any order -

- the correct five buttons. The sample shown below has as its combination.

Suppose that these locks are redesigned so that sets of as many as nine buttons or as few

as one button could serve as combinations. How many additional combinations would this

allow?
 Ans. 770

2. For any positive integer , let denote the square of the sum of the digits of .

For , let . Find . Ans. 169

3. Suppose that for . Suppose further

that What is the smallest

possible value of ? Ans. 20

4. Let , in lowest terms, be the probability that a randomly chosen

positive divisor of is an integer multiple of . Find . Ans. 634

5. It is possible to place positive integers into the vacant twenty-one squares of the

square shown below so that the numbers in each row and column form arithmetic

sequences. Find the number that must occupy the vacant square marked by the asterisk

(*).

Ans. 142

6.