Maths Olympiad Prep

Library / HMMT February /1032 of 1302

HMMT February, 2019

Number theory Difficulty 5.6 AIME, harder Prove it United States

Problem:
Let SS be the set of all positive factors of 60006000. What is the probability that a random quadruple (a,b,c,d)∈S4(a, b, c, d) \in S^{4} satisfies
lcm⁡(gcd⁡(a,b),gcd⁡(c,d))=gcd⁡(lcm⁡(a,b),lcm⁡(c,d))? \operatorname{lcm}(\operatorname{gcd}(a, b), \operatorname{gcd}(c, d)) = \operatorname{gcd}(\operatorname{lcm}(a, b), \operatorname{lcm}(c, d))?

Solution

Solution:
For each prime factor, let the greatest power that divides a,b,c,da, b, c, d be p,q,r,sp, q, r, s. WLOG assume that p≤qp \leq q and r≤sr \leq s, and further WLOG assume that p≤rp \leq r. Then we need r=min⁡(q,s)r = \min(q, s). If q=rq = r then we have p≤q=r≤sp \leq q = r \leq s, and if r=sr = s then we have p≤r=s≤qp \leq r = s \leq q, and in either case the condition reduces to the two "medians" among p,q,r,sp, q, r, s are equal. (It is not difficult to see that this condition is also sufficient.)

Now we compute the number of quadruples (p,q,r,sp, q, r, s) of integers between 00 and nn inclusive that satisfy the above condition. If there are three distinct numbers then there are (n+13)\binom{n+1}{3} ways to choose the three numbers and 4!/2=124!/2 = 12 ways to assign them (it must be a 11-22-11 split). If there are two distinct numbers then there are (n+12)\binom{n+1}{2} ways to choose the numbers and 4+4=84 + 4 = 8 ways to assign them (it must be a 33-11 or a 11-33 split). If there is one distinct number then there are n+1n+1 ways to assign. Together we have
12(n+13)+8(n+12)+(n+1)=2(n+1)n(n−1)+4(n+1)n+(n+1)=(n+1)(2n(n+1)+1) 12\binom{n+1}{3} + 8\binom{n+1}{2} + (n+1) = 2(n+1)n(n-1) + 4(n+1)n + (n+1) = (n+1)(2n(n+1)+1)
possible quadruples. So if we choose a random quadruple then the probability that it satisfies the condition is (n+1)(2n(n+1)+1)(n+1)4=2n(n+1)+1(n+1)3\frac{(n+1)(2n(n+1)+1)}{(n+1)^4} = \frac{2n(n+1)+1}{(n+1)^3}.

Since 6000=24⋅53⋅316000 = 2^4 \cdot 5^3 \cdot 3^1 and the power of different primes are independent, we plug in n=4,3,1n = 4, 3, 1 to get the overall probability to be
41125⋅2564⋅58=41512 \frac{41}{125} \cdot \frac{25}{64} \cdot \frac{5}{8} = \frac{41}{512}

Want a route through all this instead of an archive? The track puts 2,604 problems in a working order, from Junior Challenge level to the IMO shortlist.

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