Maths Olympiad Prep

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HMMT November, 2021

Algebra Difficulty 5.4 AIME, harder Prove it United States

Problem:

There are 88 lily pads in a pond numbered 1,2,…,81, 2, \ldots, 8. A frog starts on lily pad 11. During the ii-th second, the frog jumps from lily pad ii to i+1i+1, falling into the water with probability 1i+1\frac{1}{i+1}. The probability that the frog lands safely on lily pad 88 without having fallen into the water at any point can be written as mn\frac{m}{n}, where m,nm, n are positive integers and gcd⁡(m,n)=1\operatorname{gcd}(m, n) = 1. Find 100m+n100m + n.

Solution

Solution:

The probability the frog lands safely on lily pad i+1i+1 given that the frog safely landed on lily pad ii is ii+1\frac{i}{i+1}. The probability the frog makes it to lily pad 88 safely is simply the product of the probabilities of the frog making it to each of the lily pads 22 through 88 given it had safely landed on the lily pad before it. Thus, the probability is
12⋅23⋯78=18. \frac{1}{2} \cdot \frac{2}{3} \cdots \frac{7}{8} = \frac{1}{8}.

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