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imc

algebra intermediate

Problem

A restaurant offers three desserts, and exactly twice as many appetizers as main courses. A dinner consists of an appetizer, a main course, and a dessert. What is the least number of main courses that a restaurant should offer so that a customer could have a different dinner each night in the year ?
(A)
(B)
(C)
(D)
(E)
Solution
Let be the number of main courses the restaurant serves, so is the number of appetizers. Then the number of dinner combinations is . Since the customer wants to eat a different dinner in all days of , we must have Also, year 2003 is not a leap year, because 2003 divided by 4 does not equal an integer. The smallest integer value that satisfies this is .
Final answer
E