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Combinatorics Difficulty 4.9 AIME Find the answer United States

Problem:
Let QQ be the product of the sizes of all the non-empty subsets of {1,2,,2012}\{1,2, \ldots, 2012\}, and let M=log2(log2(Q))M= \log_{2}\left(\log_{2}(Q)\right). Give lower and upper bounds LL and UU for MM. If 0<LMU0<L \leq M \leq U, then your score will be min(23,233(UL))\min \left(23,\left\lfloor\frac{23}{3(U-L)}\right\rfloor\right). Otherwise, your score will be 0.

A number or a short expression. Fractions can be typed as 3/2, and spacing doesn't matter.

Solution

Solution:
Answer: 2015.318180... In this solution, all logarithms will be taken in base 2. It is clear that log(Q)=k=12012(2012k)log(k)\log (Q)=\sum_{k=1}^{2012}\binom{2012}{k} \log (k). By paring kk with 2012k2012-k, we get k=120110.5log(k(2012k))(2012k)+log(2012)\sum_{k=1}^{2011} 0.5 * \log (k(2012-k))\binom{2012}{k}+\log (2012), which is between 0.5log(2012)k=02012(2012k)0.5 * \log (2012) \sum_{k=0}^{2012}\binom{2012}{k} and log(2012)k=02012(2012k)\log (2012) \sum_{k=0}^{2012}\binom{2012}{k}; i.e., the answer is between log(2012)22011\log (2012) 2^{2011} and log(2012)22012\log (2012) 2^{2012}. Thus log(log(Q))\log (\log (Q)) is between 2011+log(log(2012))2011+\log (\log (2012)) and 2012+log(log(2012))2012+\log (\log (2012)). Also 3<log(log(2012))<43<\log (\log (2012))<4. So we get 2014<M<20162014<M<2016.

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