Maths Olympiad Prep

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Algebra Difficulty 7.1 National olympiad, round 2 Prove it Argentina

In basketball the free-throw rate (FRT) of a player is the ratio of the number of his successful free throws to the number of all of his free throws. After the first half of a game Mateo's FRT was less than 75%75\%, and at the end of the game it was greater than 75%75\%. Can one claim with certainty that there was a moment when his FRT was exactly 75%75\%? Answer the same question for 60%60\% instead of 75%75\%?

Solution

The answer is yes for 75%75\% and no for 60%60\%.
Let the FRT was less than 75%75\% after the first half but eventually greater than 75%75\%. Then there is a successful free throw in the second half such that after it the FRT became at least 75%75\%. Consider the first such free throw SS. We claim that after SS the FRT has become exactly 75%75\%. Let the FRT before SS be xy\frac{x}{y} where yy is the total number of free throws before SS and xx is the number of successful ones among them. Then the FRT after SS is x+1y+1\frac{x+1}{y+1}, and by assumption, xy<34x+1y+1\frac{x}{y} < \frac{3}{4} \leq \frac{x+1}{y+1}. The left inequality gives 4x<3y4x < 3y, the right one yields 3y4x+13y \leq 4x+1. Hence 4x<3y4x+14x < 3y \leq 4x+1, and because 3y3y is an integer, it follows that 3y=4x+13y = 4x+1. It is immediate that this equality is equivalent to x+1y+1=34\frac{x+1}{y+1} = \frac{3}{4}.
Therefore SS made the FRT exactly 75%75\%.

The case 60%60\% is different. Let Mateo score 44 free throws out of a total of 77 in the first half. Then his FRT after the first half is 47<35\frac{4}{7} < \frac{3}{5}. Suppose also that all of his free throws in the second half are successful. The first one of them makes the FRT equal to 58>35\frac{5}{8} > \frac{3}{5}. Each subsequent free throw, being successful, increases the FRT (because if 0<u<v0 < u < v then uv<u+1v+1\frac{u}{v} < \frac{u+1}{v+1}). So the FRT will be greater than 60%60\% at the end of the game, but never exactly equal to 60%60\% throughout. Naturally there are (infinitely) many fractions that can replace 47\frac{4}{7} in this argument: 12\frac{1}{2}, 712\frac{7}{12}, 1017\frac{10}{17}, 1322\frac{13}{22}, 1627\frac{16}{27} etc.

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