Maths Olympiad Prep

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Algebra Difficulty 5.0 AIME, harder Prove it Romania

Determine all positive integers aa for which there exist exactly 2014 positive integers bb such that 2ab52 \le \frac{a}{b} \le 5.

Solution

Rewrite 2ab52 \le \frac{a}{b} \le 5 as 2a10b5a2a \le 10b \le 5a. It follows that the sequence 2a,2a+1,,5a2a, 2a+1, \dots, 5a contains 2014 multiples of 10, hence it contains at least 2013 and at most 2015 groups of 10 consecutive numbers. We deduce that 2013105a2a<2015102013 \cdot 10 \le 5a - 2a < 2015 \cdot 10, which leads to a{6710,6711,,6716}a \in \{6710, 6711, \dots, 6716\}. By inspection, we conclude that the required values of aa are: 6710, 6712, and 6713.

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