Maths Olympiad Prep

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Number theory Difficulty 4.3 AIME Find the answer Italy

Problem:

How many ordered pairs of integers (x,y)(x, y) are there such that xy=4(y2+x)x y = 4(y^{2} + x)?

Pick one

Solution

Solution:

The answer is (E). Let us rewrite the expression as xy4x=4y2x y - 4 x = 4 y^{2}, that is, x(y4)=4y2x(y-4) = 4 y^{2}. y=4y = 4 is not a solution, so we can divide by y4y-4 and obtain the equation
x=4y2y4. x = \frac{4 y^{2}}{y-4}.
Observing that y2=(y+4)(y4)+16y^{2} = (y+4)(y-4) + 16 we can further rewrite the equation in the form
x=4(y+4)+64y4, x = 4(y+4) + \frac{64}{y-4},
so the solutions of the original equation correspond to the integer values of yy for which 64y4\frac{64}{y-4} is an integer (indeed, for such values of yy there exists a unique choice of xx, given by the previous expression, that provides a solution of the original equation).
It follows that the solutions sought are as many as the divisors (positive and negative) of 6464: these are all of the form ±2i\pm 2^{i} with i=0,1,,6i=0,1, \ldots, 6, hence there are exactly 27=142 \cdot 7 = 14.

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Source: MathNet, licensed CC-BY-4.0. Statement translated into English from the original; metadata (topic, difficulty) added by this project.