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Harvard-MIT Mathematics Tournament

Algebra Difficulty 5.1 AIME, harder Prove it United States

Problem:
A sequence consists of the digits 122333444455555…122333444455555 \ldots such that each positive integer nn is repeated nn times, in increasing order. Find the sum of the 4501st and 4052nd digits of this sequence.

Solution

Solution:
Answer: 13. Note that nn contributes n⋅d(n)n \cdot d(n) digits, where d(n)d(n) is the number of digits of nn. Then because 1+⋯+99=49501+\cdots+99=4950, we know that the digits of interest appear amongst copies of two digit numbers. Now for 10≤n≤9910 \leq n \leq 99, the number of digits in the subsequence up to the last copy of nn is
1+2+3+⋯+9+2⋅(10+⋯+n)=2⋅(1+⋯+n)−45=n2+n−45 1+2+3+\cdots+9+2 \cdot(10+\cdots+n)=2 \cdot(1+\cdots+n)-45=n^{2}+n-45
Since 672+67−45=451167^{2}+67-45=4511, the two digits are 6 and 7 in some order, so have sum 13.

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