Maths Olympiad Prep

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Algebra Difficulty 5.8 AIME, harder Find the answer Italy

Problem:

A sequence of 2019 numbers a1,a2,a3,,a2019a_{1}, a_{2}, a_{3}, \ldots, a_{2019} is given. It is known that, choosing any 4 consecutive terms of the sequence, their sum is constant. Similarly, taking two consecutive numbers, their absolute difference is constant (that is a1a2=a2a3=a3a4=\left|a_{1}-a_{2}\right|=\left|a_{2}-a_{3}\right|=\left|a_{3}-a_{4}\right|=\ldots ).
It is also known that a1<a2<a3a_{1}<a_{2}<a_{3} and that a2=6a_{2}=6. What is the sum of all the numbers of the sequence?

Pick one

Solution

Solution:

The answer is (D). Since the sum of 4 consecutive terms is constant, for every n1n \geq 1 we have an+an+1+an+2+an+3=an+1+an+2+an+3+an+4a_{n}+a_{n+1}+a_{n+2}+a_{n+3}=a_{n+1}+a_{n+2}+a_{n+3}+a_{n+4}, from which an=an+4a_{n}=a_{n+4}, that is, the sequence is periodic and repeats after 4 terms.

Since a1<a2<a3a_{1}<a_{2}<a_{3} holds, the differences a2a1a_{2}-a_{1} and a3a2a_{3}-a_{2} are positive and, by hypothesis, equal to a constant dd. Since a2=6a_{2}=6, we can write a1=6da_{1}=6-d, a3=6+da_{3}=6+d and we obtain a5=a1=6da_{5}=a_{1}=6-d by periodicity; a4a3=±da_{4}-a_{3}= \pm d, so a4=6+2da_{4}=6+2 d or a4=6a_{4}=6. In the first case we would have a4a5=3da_{4}-a_{5}=3 d, absurd, so necessarily a4=6a_{4}=6.

The sequence is therefore 6d,6,6+d,6,6d,66d,6,6+d6-d, 6,6+d, 6,6-d, 6 \ldots 6-d, 6,6+d (since the terms are 2019, which gives remainder 3 when divided by 4). In each block of 4 and in the last block of 3 the elements 6d6-d and 6+d6+d have sum 12=6212=6 \cdot 2 and hence the total sum is 20196=121142019 \cdot 6=12114 independently of dd.

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