Rick likes to separate his collection of books into various groups by genre. He has 400 books in total and proceeds to divide them into two separate equally-sized categories repeatedly until he has each book in a category with 24 other books. How many times must he break these groups into smaller groups to accomplish this? Let's answer step by step:
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Rick starts with 400 books and divides them into two categories of equal size, meaning there are two categories of 400 / 2 = 200 books. Rick repeats this process again, dividing the 200 book categories into equal halves, leaving him with 200 / 2 = 100 books in each. Rick repeats this process again, dividing the 100 book categories into equal halves, leaving him with 100 / 2 = 50 books in each. Rick repeats this process again, dividing the 50 book categories into equal halves, leaving him with 50 / 2 = 25 books in each. Since Rick is looking for categories with 25 books in each, he accomplishes this by the 4th step. The answer: 4.
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