Maths Olympiad Prep

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Algebra Difficulty 4.6 AIME Prove it United States

Problem:

Evaluate the expression
Figure 1
where the digit 22 appears 20132013 times.

Solution

Solution:

20132014\boxed{\dfrac{2013}{2014}}

Let f(n)f(n) denote the corresponding expression with the digit 22 appearing exactly nn times. Then f(1)=12f(1) = \dfrac{1}{2} and for n>1n > 1, f(n)=12f(n1)f(n) = \dfrac{1}{2 - f(n-1)}.

By induction using the identity
12N1N=NN+1, \frac{1}{2 - \frac{N-1}{N}} = \frac{N}{N+1},
we have f(n)=nn+1f(n) = \dfrac{n}{n+1} for all n1n \geq 1, so f(2013)=20132014f(2013) = \dfrac{2013}{2014}.

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