Problem:
Determine all positive integers that are equal to 300 times the sum of their digits.
Problem:
Determine all positive integers that are equal to 300 times the sum of their digits.
Solution:
We will show that there is a unique solution, namely .
Let be a positive integer satisfying the given conditions. We immediately observe that, since is a multiple of , and hence of , the units and tens digits of must be equal to zero. Suppose then that its decimal representation is , where, as usual, the first digit is different from zero. We have
and, since all digits are less than or equal to ,
From the hypothesis we obtain, by the preceding inequalities, . We verify by induction that this last inequality is false for : the base step is the verification that ; for the inductive step, suppose that : then .
It follows that . Thus is of the form (in this case would a priori also be allowed, although as we shall see this does not occur). The equation becomes , which in turn simplifies to
From this last equation we deduce that is a divisor of , so the only possibility for having a positive integer is and consequently . On the other hand, the number thus found, , does indeed satisfy the conditions of the problem.