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Algebra Difficulty 5.5 AIME, harder Prove it Brazil

AA, BB are real numbers. Find a necessary and sufficient condition for Ax+B[x]=Ay+B[y]A x + B [x] = A y + B [y] to have no solutions except x=yx = y.

Solution

If A=0A = 0, then we have Bx=ByB \lfloor x \rfloor = B \lfloor y \rfloor which obviously has infinitely many solutions with xyx \neq y. So assume A0A \neq 0. Then we can write the equation as BA(xy)=yx\frac{B}{A}(\lfloor x \rfloor - \lfloor y \rfloor) = y - x. If xyx \neq y, we can assume x<yx < y. We cannot have x=y\lfloor x \rfloor = \lfloor y \rfloor, since yx>0y - x > 0, so x<y\lfloor x \rfloor < \lfloor y \rfloor. Write x=nϵx = n - \epsilon, y=n+d+δy = n + d + \delta, where nn is any integer, dd is a non-negative integer, δ[0,1)\delta \in [0, 1) and ϵ(0,1]\epsilon \in (0, 1]. So BA=d+νd+1\frac{B}{A} = -\frac{d+\nu}{d+1}, where dd is a non-negative integer and ν=δ+ϵ(0,2)\nu = \delta + \epsilon \in (0, 2).

We note first that 2<d+νd+1<0-2 < -\frac{d+\nu}{d+1} < 0. So if there are solutions with xyx \neq y and A0A \neq 0, then BA\frac{B}{A} must belong to the open interval (2,0)(-2, 0).

Conversely, by taking d=0d = 0 and suitable ν\nu it is clear that BA\frac{B}{A} can take any value in (2,0)(-2, 0). Thus a necessary and sufficient condition for solutions with xyx \neq y is A=0A = 0 or BA(2,0)\frac{B}{A} \in (-2, 0).

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