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A train driver earns $100.00 per trip and can only travel every 4 days, which is the duration of each trip. He only wins if he makes the trip and knows that he will be on vacation from June 1st to 10th, when he will not be able to travel. His first trip took place on the first of January. Assume that the year has 365 days. If the train driver wants to earn as much as possible, how many trips will he need to make?

Source: ENEM (Adapted)

1st resolution (the correct one):

365 days - 10 days = 355

355/4 = 88 trips + 3 days

2nd resolution (the one I did):

365/4 = 91 trips + 1 day

91 trips - 2 trips (10 days off he won't work) = 89 trips + 3 days

Why isn't the second one giving the same result?

  • Ten days is more than two trips. The problem is not the order of operations, it's that you have not been paying proper attention to what to do with the extra two days after you divide $10$ by $4$. – David K Jan 30 '22 at 04:08
  • Now I realized that the remaining 2 days out of 10 he won't work, I used it as a working day. Thank you – VoolPix Jan 30 '22 at 11:30

1 Answers1

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In your approach, it should be:

$91$ trips - $2.5$ trips (10 days he won't work) = 88.5 trips.

So, from your approach, since the year has $91$ trips + 1 day, he can make $88.5$ trips $+ 1$ day = $88.75$ trips.

Since he can't make a fractional part of a trip, then, based on your approach, he is limited to $88$ trips.

Edit
Note that if the problem was altered so that he gets $9$ days off instead of $10$ days off, then your approach, modified as I have suggested, would get the correct answer of $89$ trips.

That is $91 - 2.25 = 88.75$

So, $91$ trips + $1$ day = $88.75$ trips + $1$ day $ = 89$ trips.


Addendum
Actually, both my modification of your approach, and the first resolution are careless. In the original problem, a critical question is, how many days are there between January 1 and June 30, inclusive.

It turns out that there are $181 = [(4 \times 45) + 1]$ days. So, by forcing the vacation to start on June 1, only $1$ day is wasted, between between January 1 and June 30, inclusive.

As it turns out, in the 1st resolution, which computes $88$ trips, there are $3$ extra days. Therefore, regardless of how many days are wasted between January 1 and June 30, inclusive, you can still make $88$ trips.

As an example where my modified approach leads to the wrong answer, suppose the vacation is June 1 through June 9.

Then, there are $(4 \times 89) = 356$ work days. However, these work days are split into $2$ sections: $181$ days before June 1, and $175$ days after June 9.

Therefore, if the vacation starts on June 1, and ends on June 9, my original conclusion of $89$ trips is wrong.

user2661923
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