Maths Olympiad Prep

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Algebra Difficulty 5.6 AIME, harder Prove it Ukraine

In expression 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 91\ 2\ 3\ 4\ 5\ 6\ 7\ 8\ 9 you should arrange parentheses and four arithmetic symbols +,,×,:+, -, \times, : between some of the digits to obtain the largest possible number.
(Bogdan Rublyov)

Solution

It is clear that the largest number you can get if you use only the actions of multiplication and addition. We will show that there is actually no sense to put any characters and is the largest nine-digit number 123456789123456789.

First remove one "+" sign, that is write XY\overline{XY} instead of expression X+YX + Y, as a result, the expression will obviously increase, because

XY10X+Y>X+Y. \overline{XY} \ge 10X + Y > X + Y.

Now the expression contains only the multiplication signs. Then, we will substitute XYX \cdot Y with XY\overline{XY}, and then we will show that the new expression will increase. Let YY have kk digits, i.e. 10k1<Y<10k10^{k-1} < Y < 10^k, then
XY10kX+Y>XY(10kY)X+Y>0. \overline{XY} \ge 10^k X + Y > X \cdot Y \Leftrightarrow (10^k - Y)X + Y > 0.

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Source: MathNet, licensed CC-BY-4.0. Statement and solution reproduced as published; topic and difficulty added by this site.