ODDLY:- I looked at this one as soon as I got on the site and
started off by writing down all of the ones up to 199. 111, 113,
115, 117.......197, 199. I got the answer to all of them which
was 3875. I then changed the first digit to 3 to make it 311,
313... 399. Then did the same for all the rest. My final answer
when I had added it all up was 69,375.
Nicely done Adam from Poltair Community School and Sports
College, Cornwall!
A big thank you too to Michael for your elegant method of finding
the sum of all 3 digit numbers each of whose digits is odd:
I think the answer is 69,375.
1. I estimated the total c 50,000.
2. I wrote out all the 3-digit numbers 100-199 which had odd
digits only, and observed a pattern: value of 100 occurred 25
times.
3. Decided that if all those numbers were written out, the values
of 100, 300, 500, 700, and 900 would each occur 25 times; the
values of 10, 30, 50, 70, and 90 would do the same; and the
values of 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9 similarly.
4. Therefore, the sum can be simplified to:
25(100+300+500+700+900) + 25(10+30+50+70+90) + 25(1+3+5+7+9) =
69,375 5.
This is still very large!
We can simplify it further to: 25(111+333+555+777+999) =
69,375