Skip to main content
OlympiadHQ

Browse · harp

Print

smc

prealgebra intermediate

Problem

Given the set whose elements are zero and the even integers, positive and negative. Of the five operations applied to any pair of elements: (1) addition (2) subtraction (3) multiplication (4) division (5) finding the arithmetic mean (average), those elements that only yield elements of are:
(A)
(B)
(C)
(D)
Solution
The first three listed operations, applied to even integers, all yield even integers trivially. As for the fourth operation (division) and fifth operation (average of pair), we can find pairs of even numbers that are mapped to odd integers, such as , and . Therefore, the operations that map even integers to even integers only are operations , so our answer is and we are done.
Final answer
D