Maths Olympiad Prep

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Algebra Difficulty 5.5 AIME, harder Prove it North Macedonia

The teacher ordered 20 students from one class in a row and gave 800 candies to them. Every student had to calculate the ratio xx+2k1\frac{x}{x+2k-1}, where xx is the number of candies that he got and kk is the number of his position in the row, counting from left to right. After calculating they all got the same result. How many candies were given to the student that was twelfth in the row?

Solution

Let the first student received x1x_1 candies, the second x2x_2 candies, ..., and the twentieth received x20x_{20} candies. So x1+x2++x20=800x_1 + x_2 + \dots + x_{20} = 800. Let xkxk+2k1=M\frac{x_k}{x_k + 2k-1} = M from where xk=(2k1)M1Mx_k = (2k-1)\frac{M}{1-M}. For the sum x1+x2++x20x_1 + x_2 + \dots + x_{20} we obtain
x1+x2++x20=M1M(1+3+5++39)=M1M40202=400M1M x_1 + x_2 + \dots + x_{20} = \frac{M}{1-M}(1+3+5+\dots+39) = \frac{M}{1-M}\frac{40 \cdot 20}{2} = 400\frac{M}{1-M}

Because x1+x2++x20=800x_1 + x_2 + \cdots + x_{20} = 800 we get 400M1M=800400^{\frac{M}{1-M}} = 800 or M1M=2\frac{M}{1-M} = 2. Hence the twelfth student received x12=(2121)2=46x_{12} = (2 \cdot 12 - 1) \cdot 2 = 46.

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