Odd and Even Digit Averages

What do the following 98 numbers have in common (permalink)?

102, 123, 147, 234, 258, 306, 345, 369, 456, 567, 678, 789, 1012, 1034, 1056, 1078, 1223, 1245, 1267, 1289, 1447, 1469, 2334, 2356, 2378, 2558, 3036, 3058, 3445, 3467, 3489, 3669, 4556, 4578, 5667, 5689, 6778, 7889, 10004, 10022, 10036, 10112, 10167, 10234, 10356, 10478, 10667, 11125, 11233, 11247, 11459, 11477, 12223, 12278, 12345, 12467, 12589, 12778, 13349, 13457, 14447, 14555, 14569, 14677, 15699, 16779, 20238, 20346, 22236, 22344, 22358, 22588, 23334, 23389, 23456, 23578, 23889, 24568, 25558, 25666, 25788, 30048, 30066, 30336, 30444, 30458, 30566, 33347, 33455, 33469, 33699, 34445, 34567, 34689, 35679, 36669, 36777, 36899

First and foremost, all the numbers have their digits arranged in ascending order. Apart from that however, what else do they have in common? Let's look at the largest member of the sequence: 36899. It has odd digits of 3, 9, 9 and even digits of 6, 8. What are the averages of the odd and even digits? Well, (3 + 9 + 9)/3 = 7 and (6 + 8)/3 = 7 and so the average of the odd and even digits is the same. This is true of all the numbers. The reason that the digits have been arranged in ascending order is that these might be called "root" numbers because any number that is a permutation of the digits of the one of these numbers will have the property that its average of odd and even digits is the same.

In the range up to 40000, there are 1886 numbers that satisfy this equal average criterion. This comprises 4.71% of the range. Here is a permalink that will display these numbers. If we want to apply additional criteria, then this total of 1886 can be reduced significantly. For example, let’s require that the numbers be prime as well as the average of odd and even digits. The first such number would be 1223 which is prime and where the odd average is (1 + 3)/2 = 2 and the even average is (2 + 2)/2 = 2. There are 97 such numbers in the range up to 40000 (permalink):

1223, 1289, 2213, 2819, 2837, 3041, 3221, 3467, 4013, 4637, 4673, 4691, 5689, 5869, 6473, 6491, 7283, 7643, 7687, 7823, 7867, 8219, 8237, 8273, 8291, 8677, 9281, 9461, 10243, 11251, 12043, 12511, 12589, 14767, 15121, 15289, 15649, 16477, 16747, 17467, 17827, 20143, 20341, 20431, 21313, 21589, 21787, 21859, 22123, 23041, 23131, 23311, 23857, 23893, 24103, 25111, 25189, 25819, 25873, 25981, 27583, 27817, 28393, 28537, 28573, 28591, 28753, 28771, 28933, 29383, 29581, 29833, 29851, 30241, 31123, 31231, 31321, 32401, 32587, 32839, 32983, 33211, 33289, 33469, 33829, 34369, 34693, 34963, 36457, 36493, 36899, 36943, 38239, 38329, 38699, 38923, 39869

Neither of these two sequences is registered in the OEIS and I certainly won't be proposing them to the cretins who oversee it. However, the sequences are in my own private database. Here is the link. The averages themselves do not need to be integers. For example 386350 has an odd average of (3 + 3 + 5)/3 = 14/3 and an even average of (8 + 6 + 0)/3 = 14/3. However, for all numbers in the range up to 40000, the averages are all integers.

Of course, we need not consider odd and even digits. We could consider the average of prime (2, 3, 5 and 7) and non-prime (0, 1, 4, 6, 8, 9) digits. An example of a number in which the average of the prime and non-prime digits is the same would be 39760 where (3 + 7)/2 = 5 and (9 + 6 + 0)/3 = 5. Here is a permalink to generate these numbers.