2014 AMC 12A Problems/Problem 15

Problem

A five-digit palindrome is a positive integer with respective digits $abcba$ , where $a$ is non-zero. Let $S$ be the sum of all five-digit palindromes. What is the sum of the digits of $S$ ?

$\textbf{(A) }9\qquad \textbf{(B) }18\qquad \textbf{(C) }27\qquad \textbf{(D) }36\qquad \textbf{(E) }45\qquad$

Solution 1

For each digit $a=1,2,\ldots,9$ there are $10\cdot10$ (ways of choosing $b$ and $c$ ) palindromes. So the $a$ s contribute $(1+2+\cdots+9)(100)(10^4+1)$ to the sum. For each digit $b=0,1,2,\ldots,9$ there are $9\cdot10$ (since $a \neq 0$ ) palindromes. So the $b$ s contribute $(0+1+2+\cdots+9)(90)(10^3+10)$ to the sum. Similarly, for each $c=0,1,2,\ldots,9$ there are $9\cdot10$ palindromes, so the $c$ contributes $(0+1+2+\cdots+9)(90)(10^2)$ to the sum.

It just so happens that $(1+2+\cdots+9)(100)(10^4+1)+(1+2+\cdots+9)(90)(10^3+10)+(1+2+\cdots+9)(90)(10^2)=49500000$ so the sum of the digits of the sum is $\boxed{\textbf{(B)}\; 18}$ .

Solution 2

Notice that $10001+ 99999 = 110000.$ In fact, ordering the palindromes in ascending order, we find that the sum of the nth palindrome and the nth to last palindrome is $110000.$ We have $9*10*10$ palindromes, or $450$ pairs of palindromes summing to $110000.$ Performing the multiplication gives $49500000$ , so the sum $\boxed{\textbf{(B)}\; 18}$ .

Solution 3

As shown above, there are a total of $900$ five-digit palindromes. We can calculate their sum by finding the expected value of a randomly selected palindrome satisfying the conditions given, then multiplying it by $900$ to get our sum. The expected value for the ten-thousands and the units digit is $\frac{1+2+3+\cdots+9}{9}=5$ , and the expected value for the thousands, hundreds, and tens digit is $\frac{0+1+2+\cdots+9}{10}=4.5$ . Therefore our expected value is $5\times10^4+4.5\times10^3+4.5\times10^2+4.5\times10^1+5\times10^0=55,\!000$ . Since the question asks for the sum of the digits of the resulting sum, we do not need to keep the trailing zeros of either $55,\!000$ or $900$ . Thus we only need to calculate $55\times9=495$ , and the desired sum is $\boxed{\textbf{(B) }18}$ .

2014 AMC 12A (Problems • Answer Key • Resources)
Preceded by Problem 14	Followed by Problem 16
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2014 AMC 12A Problems/Problem 15

Contents

Problem

Solution 1

Solution 2

Solution 3

See Also