2011 AMC 12A Problems/Problem 19

Problem

At a competition with $N$ players, the number of players given elite status is equal to $2^{1+\lfloor \log_{2} (N-1) \rfloor}-N$ . Suppose that $19$ players are given elite status. What is the sum of the two smallest possible values of $N$ ?

$\textbf{(A)}\ 38 \qquad \textbf{(B)}\ 90 \qquad \textbf{(C)}\ 154 \qquad \textbf{(D)}\ 406 \qquad \textbf{(E)}\ 1024$

Solution

We start with $2^{1+\lfloor\log_{2}(N-1)\rfloor}-N = 19$ . After rearranging, we get $\lfloor\log_{2}(N-1)\rfloor = \log_{2} \left(\frac{N+19}{2}\right)$ .

Since $\lfloor\log_{2}(N-1)\rfloor$ is a positive integer, $\frac{N+19}{2}$ must be in the form of $2^{m}$ for some positive integer $m$ . From this fact, we get $N=2^{m+1}-19$ .

If we now check integer values of N that satisfy this condition, starting from $N=19$ , we quickly see that the first values that work for $N$ are $2^6 -19$ and $2^7 -19$ , giving values of $5$ and $6$ for $m$ , respectively. Adding up these two values for $N$ , we get $45 + 109 = 154 \rightarrow \boxed{\textbf{C}}$

2011 AMC 12A (Problems • Answer Key • Resources)
Preceded by Problem 18	Followed by Problem 20
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All AMC 12 Problems and Solutions

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2011 AMC 12A Problems/Problem 19

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