Problem of the Week

Problem 4

A list of integers -5,-4,-3,...,504 are arranged on a whiteboard.
At each stage, two numbers a and b are removed from the whiteboard and replaced with the single number a+b-2.
This process is continued until there is only one number remaining on the whiteboard.
What is this number?

Prove that your answer is the same for all a, b.

\textbf{Note:}
As a reminder, we will unfortunately not be giving any credit to proofs solely by exhaustion (For example, simply brute forcing all elements in Python with no mathematical explanation). Brute-force is only acceptable for problems that don’t require a proof. Happy problem solving!

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