Arithmetic game with four numbers to get a value of $10$

5.1k Views Asked by At

So there's a small game where when we see a four digit number somewhere in public, my friends and I would try to form the value of ten using these four digits with only basic operations.
E.g.
If we see a four-digit number: $5829$

a possible way is to do:
$$9 + 5 - 8 \div 2 = 10$$

When I say basic I mean operations only include "$+,\div,-,\times"$ and the digits can be used in any order as done above.

Are there any sufficient conditions to guarantee that a string of numbers can attain a value of $10$? How many solutions are there?

1

There are 1 best solutions below

0
On BEST ANSWER

There are $715$ ways to select $4$ digits when repetitions are allowed. I made a program to run through all combinations of digits and operators and the result was that there are $439$ digit selections which have at least one solution. The complete list is a bit big to post here, so I'm just including a snippet from the start and one from the end.

enter image description here

enter image description here