The product of the page numbers on two facing pages of a book is 182. Find the page numbers.

Question

anonymous · Answer

If two pages face each other, then they differ by only one. (How can two pages differ by more than 1 if they face each other? They would have a page between them.)

So let n be the number of the first page. Then n+1 must be the number of the second page.

The product of these two numbers, n*(n+1) is 182,

Thus, n^2+n = 182.

You can solve this for n (the first page number) by using the quadratic formula.

zarkon · Answer

182=2*7*13

so the page numbers must be 13 and 2*7=14

anonymous · Answer

Thank you, I was confused I was trying to figure out what the pages were if you added them together, forgot product meant multiplication

anonymous · Answer

Nice method, Zarkon. I hadn't even considered factoring it.