Problem:
A sequence consists of the digits such that each positive integer is repeated times, in increasing order. Find the sum of the 4501st and 4052nd digits of this sequence.
Harvard-MIT Mathematics Tournament
Solution
Solution:
Answer: 13. Note that contributes digits, where is the number of digits of . Then because , we know that the digits of interest appear amongst copies of two digit numbers. Now for , the number of digits in the subsequence up to the last copy of is
Since , the two digits are 6 and 7 in some order, so have sum 13.
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