better method? mine was too long

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better method? mine was too long

by pathaniaus » Thu Jun 04, 2009 8:04 am
The product of all the prime numbers less than 20 is closest to which of the following powers of 10?

A) 10^9
B) 10^8
C) 10^7
D) 10 ^6
E) 10^5

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by Osirus@VeritasPrep » Thu Jun 04, 2009 8:29 am
sorry, miscalculated
Last edited by Osirus@VeritasPrep on Thu Jun 04, 2009 4:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: better method? mine was too long

by dtweah » Thu Jun 04, 2009 12:53 pm
pathaniaus wrote:The product of all the prime numbers less than 20 is closest to which of the following powers of 10?

A) 10^9
B) 10^8
C) 10^7
D) 10 ^6
E) 10^5
Find a way to do only very easy multiplication and use logical deduction on the rest.

(210 x 11 ) x (13 x 17) x 19.

To mulitply any two digit number by 11, separate the two numbers and put their sum in the middle. This easily gives

2310 x (13 x 17) x 19

Now 10 x 20 x 20 = 4000 cannot be too far from 13 x 17 and 19.
Whatever the real values are u know the 2 reamaining numbers each has 4 digits. When the smallest 4 digit number is squared you get 10^6=1 million and you know the 2 numbers above are each greater than 1000.

You can easily see that 2000 x 4000 = 8 x 10^6. 6 zero's but 8 million which is way above 1 million.

So the correct answer must be closer to 10^7

Choose C.

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by agoyal2 » Fri Jun 05, 2009 10:45 am
I did it with extreme approximation, not sure if it is acceptable:

2 x 5 x 3 x 7 x 11 x 13 x 17 x 19
=> 10 x 21 x 11 x 13 x 17 x 19
=> Approximate as follows: 21=2X10, 11=10, 19=2X10, 17=2^4
=> 10 x 2 x 10 x 10 x 13 x 2^4 x 2 x 10
=> 10^4 x 2^6 x 13
=> Approximate 13 to be 2^4
=> 10^4 x 2^6 x 2^ 4
=> We know 2^10 = 1024 ~ 10^3
=> 10^7