Friday, 24 October 2025

Exercise (1.4).9

An ATM machine distributes £10 and £20 notes. If you ask for £100, what possible combinations of £10 and £20 notes can you get?


We formulate the problem as follows, with $x$ the number of £10 notes, and $y$ £20 notes.

$$ 10x + 20y = 100 $$

The $\gcd(20,10)=10$ which divides 100, so the equation has integer solutions.


By inspection a solution is $x_0 = 10, y_0 = 0$. The general solution is therefore

$$ x = 10 + 2t \quad y = -t$ $$


However, the number of notes $x,y$ must be non-negative, so we have the following inequalities

$$ 10 + 2t \ge 0 \quad \iff \quad t \ge -5 $$

$$ -t \ge 0 \quad \iff \quad 0 \ge t  $$

That is

$$ -5 \le t \le 0 $$

The values of $t$ which generate non-negative $x,y$ are -5, -4, -3, -2, -1 and 0.


The possible combinations of $x$, £10 notes, and $y$, £20 notes are

tx=10+2ty=-t10x+20y




-505100
-424100
-343100
-262100
-181100
0100100