Maths Olympiad Prep

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Algebra Difficulty 6.8 National Olympiad Prove it Philippines

Problem:

Two friends, Marco and Ian, are talking about their ages.

Ian says, "My age is a zero of a polynomial with integer coefficients."

Having seen the polynomial p(x)p(x) Ian was talking about, Marco exclaims, "You mean, you are seven years old? Oops, sorry I miscalculated! p(7)=77p(7)=77 and not zero."

"Yes, I am older than that," Ian's agreeing reply.

Then Marco mentioned a certain number, but realizes after a while that he was wrong again because the value of the polynomial at that number is 85.

Ian sighs, "I am even older than that number."

Determine Ian's age.

Solution

Solution:

Let aa be Ian's age. Then
p(x)=(xa)q(x) p(x) = (x - a) q(x)
where q(x)q(x) is a polynomial with integer coefficients.

Since p(7)=77p(7) = 77, we have
p(7)=(7a)q(7)=77=711 p(7) = (7 - a) q(7) = 77 = 7 \cdot 11
Since q(7)q(7) is an integer and 7a<07 - a < 0, we restrict
a7{1,7,11,77} a - 7 \in \{1, 7, 11, 77\}
Let bb be the second number mentioned by Marco. Since p(b)=85p(b) = 85, we have
p(b)=(ba)q(b)=85=517 p(b) = (b - a) q(b) = 85 = 5 \cdot 17
Since q(b)q(b) is an integer and ba<0b - a < 0, we restrict
ab{1,5,17,85} a - b \in \{1, 5, 17, 85\}
Finally, we know from algebra that b7b - 7 is a divisor of p(b)p(7)=8577=8=23p(b) - p(7) = 85 - 77 = 8 = 2^3. It follows that
b7{1,2,4,8} b - 7 \in \{1, 2, 4, 8\}
Considering all the possibilities from ()(\star\star) and ()(\star\star\star), since a7=(ab)+(b7)a - 7 = (a - b) + (b - 7), we get
a7{2,3,5,6,7,9,13,18,19,21,25,86,87,89,93} a - 7 \in \{2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 9, 13, 18, 19, 21, 25, 86, 87, 89, 93\}
Recalling ()(\star), we get a7=7a - 7 = 7 or a=14a = 14.

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Source: MathNet, licensed CC-BY-4.0. Statement reproduced verbatim; metadata (topic, difficulty) added by this project.