Hiram's algebra notes are pages long and are printed on sheets of paper; the first sheet contains pages and , the second sheet contains pages and , and so on. One day he leaves his notes on the table before leaving for lunch, and his roommate decides to borrow some pages from the middle of the notes. When Hiram comes back, he discovers that his roommate has taken a consecutive set of sheets from the notes and that the average (mean) of the page numbers on all remaining sheets is exactly . How many sheets were borrowed?
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Problem © Mathematical Association of America (MAA), American Mathematics Competitions. Reproduced for non-commercial educational use. Solution and commentary are original to this site.