Maths Olympiad Prep

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Algebra Difficulty 5.5 AIME, harder Prove it United States

Problem:
Let aa, bb, cc be integers. Define f(x)=ax2+bx+cf(x) = a x^{2} + b x + c. Suppose there exist pairwise distinct integers uu, vv, ww such that f(u)=0f(u) = 0, f(v)=0f(v) = 0, and f(w)=2f(w) = 2. Find the maximum possible value of the discriminant b24acb^{2} - 4 a c of ff.

Solution

Solution:
Answer: 1616

By the factor theorem, f(x)=a(xu)(xv)f(x) = a(x-u)(x-v), so the constraints essentially boil down to 2=f(w)=a(wu)(wv)2 = f(w) = a(w-u)(w-v). (It's not so important that uvu \neq v; we merely specified it for a shorter problem statement.)

We want to maximize the discriminant b24ac=a2[(u+v)24uv]=a2(uv)2=a2[(wv)(wu)]2b^{2} - 4 a c = a^{2}[(u+v)^{2} - 4 u v] = a^{2}(u-v)^{2} = a^{2}[(w-v)-(w-u)]^{2}. Clearly a2a \mid 2. If a>0a > 0, then (wu)(wv)=2/a>0(w-u)(w-v) = 2 / a > 0 means the difference uv|u-v| is less than 2/a2 / a, whereas if a<0a < 0, since at least one of wu|w-u| and wv|w-v| equals 11, the difference uv|u-v| of factors is greater than 2/a2 / |a|.

So the optimal choice occurs either for a=1a = -1 and uv=3|u-v| = 3, or a=2a = -2 and uv=2|u-v| = 2. The latter wins, giving a discriminant of (2)222=16(-2)^{2} \cdot 2^{2} = 16.

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