01 Prealgebra

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01 Prealgebra

Uploaded by

Pamela Wang

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Contests

We would like to thank the following contests for allowing us to use a selection of their problems in this book
■ The Ame rican Mathematics Compet itions , a seri es of contests for U.S. middle and high school students. The AMC 8, AMC 10, and
AMC 12 contests are multiple -choice tests that are taken by over 350, 000 students every year. Top scorers on the AMC 10 and AMC
12 are invited to take the American Invitational Mathematics Examination (AIME), which is a more difficult, short-answer contest
Approximately 10,000 students ever y year participate in the AIME. Then, based on the r esults of the AMC and AIME contests, about
500 students are invited to participate in the USA Junior Mathematical Olympiad (USAJMO) and USA Mathematical Olympiad
(USAMO), 2 -day , 9 hour examinations in which each student must show all of his or her work. Results from the USA(J)MO are used
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to invite students to the Math Olympiad Summer Program, at which the U.S. team for the International Mathematical Olympiad
(IMO) is trained. More information about the AMC contests can be found on the AMC website at http:/ /Wl如.maa.org/math
competitions.
■ MATHCOUNTS®, the premi er contest for U.S. middle school studen ts . MATHCOUNTS is a natio nal enri chment, coaching, and
competi tion program that promotes middle school mathematics achievement through grassroots involvement in every U.S. state
and terr itor y, wi th over 160, 000 students participating in 2013-14. President Barack Obama, and former Presidents Bush, Clinton,
Bush and Reagan have all recognized MATHCOUNTS in White House ceremonies. The MATHCOUNTS program has also received
two White House citations as an outstanding private sector initiative. Mor e information is available at http://
www. mathcounts. org.
■ Math Olympiads for Elementary and Middle Schools (MOEMS) , an international program for students in grades 4-8. Created in 1977
by Dr. George Lenchner, MOEMS offers beginning problem solvers 5 contests each year . In 2013-14, nearly 150,000 students
worldwide from 6,000 teams participated in MOEMS. More information is available at h ttp://�几1w.moems . org.

How We Wrote This Book

This book is a collaborative effort of the staff of the Art of Problem Solving. The three authors listed on the cover would like to particularly
thank our colleagues listed below
Jason Batterson, Jeremy Copeland, Larry Evans, and Shannon Rogers, for providing extens ive proofreading, as well as valuable guidance
on pedagogy and subject coverag e;
Vanessa Rusczyk, for designing the cover and also contributing greatly to the interi or design of the book;
Arun Alagappan, Founder and President of Advantage Testing (employer of one of the authors), for supporting this project and for
providing a model of educational excellence fo r the last 25 years; and
Josh Zucker, whose comments about how he learned mathematics inspired the ques tions -before-the -lessons approach of the text
The print version of this book was written using the LaTeX document processing system, and the diagrams were prepared using Metapost
and Asymptote. We thank the authors of the various LaTeX packages that we used while preparing this book, and also the bri lliant authors
of The LaTeX Companion for writing a re ference book that is not only thorough but also very readable
The source files for the print book were initially converted to this online book using a script wri tten in the Python programming language
Palmer Mebane managed the convers ion of this bo ok from print to online, and Paul Salerno al so wrote tool s used in the conversion. Jason
Batterson and the Jacob Tyler Creative Group designed the look and feel of this online b ook. James Fung, Shelley Garg, Kyle Guillet, Tasha
Moye r, David Patrick, Shannon Rogers, Amy Szczepansk i, Deven Ware, Phyllis Xu, and Laura Zehender all helped to review and edit the
online book content

Dedication
R.B.-I dedicate this book to my mom and dad (Krishna Rao and Jaganmohan Rao ), my wife Ranu, and my daughter Meena. Thank you for
always bel ieving in me.
D.P.-Personal thanks to my most influential mathematical mentors
my parents (when I was very young),
Gerry Rising (when I was moderately young),
and Michael Artin (when I was not-so- young).
R.R.-For my students, in the hopes that they learn from me as much as I lea 「 n from them