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jmc

algebra senior

Problem

Milton spilled some ink on his homework paper. He can't read the coefficient of , but he knows that the equation has two distinct negative, integer solutions. What is the sum of all of the distinct possible integers that could be under the ink stain?

problem
Solution
Because the quadratic has two distinct integer roots, we know that it can be factored as where and are positive integers. Expanding this product gives , and comparing this to the given quadratic tells us that . So, we consider all the pairs of distinct integers that multiply to 36, and we compute their sum in each case: Summing the entries in the final column gives us a total of .
Final answer
85