Analyzing the Setup
Imagine you are standing before a grand, seven-digit combination lock. You have seven empty slots, d1,d2,d3,d4,d5,d6,d7, waiting to be filled. The challenge is that the sum of these digits must be even.
This is not a problem of brute force; it is a problem of symmetry and balance. We begin with the first slot, d1. As we know, a seven-digit number cannot start with zero.
Thus, d1 has exactly 9 choices: {1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9}. For the next five slots, d2 through d6, the rules are relaxed. Each can be any digit from 0 to 9, giving us 10 choices for each of these five positions.
By the fundamental principle of counting, the number of ways to fill these first six slots is:
The Parity Principle
Now, we arrive at the seventh slot, d7. This is where the beauty of the problem unfolds. We do not need to calculate the sum of the first six digits, S6=d1+d2+d3+d4+d5+d6. We only care about its parity—whether it is even or odd.
If S6 is even, we need d7 to be even to ensure the total sum is even. The even digits are {0,2,4,6,8}, which gives us exactly 5 choices.
If S6 is odd, we need d7 to be odd to make the total sum even. The odd digits are {1,3,5,7,9}, which also gives us exactly 5 choices. Regardless of the sum of the first six digits, the seventh digit always has exactly 5 choices to satisfy the condition.
The Final Calculation
With this insight, the total number of valid seven-digit numbers is simply the product of the choices for each slot:
The problem asks us to match this to the form m⋅n⋅10n. We can rewrite 45 as 9×5. Thus, our expression becomes:
Comparing this to m⋅n⋅10n, we identify m=9 and n=5. The final step is to find m+n, which is:
We have navigated the complexity of the problem by finding the underlying parity structure, turning a potentially tedious counting exercise into a moment of mathematical clarity. Whenever you see a parity constraint, look for the balancing act.