2000 AIME I Problems/Problem 6

Problem

For how many ordered pairs $(x,y)$ of integers is it true that $0 < x < y < 10^{6}$ and that the arithmetic mean of $x$ and $y$ is exactly $2$ more than the geometric mean of $x$ and $y$ ?

For simplicity, we can count how many valid pairs of $(\sqrt{x},\sqrt{y})$ that satisfy our equation.

The maximum that $\sqrt{y}$ can be is $10^3 - 1 = 999$ because $\sqrt{y}$ must be an integer (this is because $\sqrt{y} - \sqrt{x} = 2$ , an integer). Then $\sqrt{x} = 997$ , and we continue this downward until $\sqrt{y} = 3$ , in which case $\sqrt{x} = 1$ . The number of pairs of $(\sqrt{x},\sqrt{y})$ , and so $(x,y)$ is then $\boxed{997}$ .