The attendance at a school party is 17, 12,16, 14, 20, for Monday thru Friday. ..

Question

The logics for this question is quite hard for me. I hope someone could help.

The attendance at a school party is 17, 12,16, 14, 20, for Monday thru Friday. What's the least number of student the school has, given that no student attended the party in two consecutive days?

Answer 1

Alright, let's work through this. I am going to assume that the numbers you listed were in order to match the different days.

Mon: 17

Tues: 12

Wed: 16

Thurs: 14

Fri: 20

We can simply get the answer by adding the two consecutive days that have the most number of attendees. This would be the lowest possible number of people the school has because we know the school will have AT LEAST that many people. The two consecutive days that have the most number of people is Thursday and Friday, which is 34 people.

The school has a minimum of 34 people.

Answer 2

Clearly there must be as many as came on the two largest neighboring days. Then can you show that is enough?