Maths Olympiad Prep

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Algebra Difficulty 6.9 National Olympiad Prove it United States

Problem:
For a positive integer n>2n > 2, consider the n1n-1 fractions
21,32,,nn1 \frac{2}{1}, \frac{3}{2}, \cdots, \frac{n}{n-1}
The product of these fractions equals nn, but if you reciprocate (i.e. turn upside down) some of the fractions, the product will change. Can you make the product equal 11? Find all values of nn for which this is possible and prove that you have found them all.

Solution

Solution:
We will show that this is possible exactly when nn is a perfect square larger than 11. Suppose that we can reciprocate some of the fractions so that the resulting product is 11. Let rr represent the product of the fractions that we will reciprocate and tt represent the product of the fractions that we will leave alone. Then rt=nr \cdot t = n while 1rt=1\frac{1}{r} \cdot t = 1. Multiplying these equations shows that n=t2n = t^{2}, so nn is the square of a rational number, which means that it has to be a perfect square.

Now suppose that n=a2n = a^{2} is a perfect square. Then we can reciprocate the first a1a-1 terms of the product to obtain
(12)(a1a)(a+1a)(a2a21)=1aa2a=1 \left(\frac{1}{2}\right) \cdots \left(\frac{a-1}{a}\right) \left(\frac{a+1}{a}\right) \cdots \left(\frac{a^{2}}{a^{2}-1}\right) = \frac{1}{a} \cdot \frac{a^{2}}{a} = 1
demonstrating that modifying the product as desired is indeed possible for any perfect square.

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