Maths Olympiad Prep

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Algebra Difficulty 5.3 AIME, harder Prove it Philippines

Problem:

In an n×nn \times n checkerboard, the rows are numbered 1 to nn from top to bottom, and the columns are numbered 1 to nn from left to right. Chips are to be placed on this board so that each square has a number of chips equal to the absolute value of the difference of the row and column numbers. If the total number of chips placed on the board is 2660, find nn.

Solution

Solution:

The total number of chips for an n×nn \times n board is equal to
n×0+2×(n1)×1+2×(n2)×2++2×1×(n1)=i=1n2×(ni)×i=2(ni=1nii=1ni2)=2(nn(n+1)2n(n+1)(2n+1)6)=13n313n \begin{aligned} n \times 0 + 2 \times (n-1) \times 1 + 2 \times (n-2) \times 2 + \cdots + 2 \times 1 \times (n-1) &= \sum_{i=1}^{n} 2 \times (n-i) \times i \\ &= 2\left(n \sum_{i=1}^{n} i - \sum_{i=1}^{n} i^{2}\right) \\ &= 2\left(n \frac{n(n+1)}{2} - \frac{n(n+1)(2n+1)}{6}\right) \\ &= \frac{1}{3} n^{3} - \frac{1}{3} n \end{aligned}
Find nn such that 13n313n=2660\frac{1}{3} n^{3} - \frac{1}{3} n = 2660. This leads to n3n=7980n^{3} - n = 7980. Note that n3n7980=(n20)(n2+20n+399)=0n^{3} - n - 7980 = (n-20)(n^{2} + 20n + 399) = 0 and the only integer satisfying it is 2020.

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