Maths Olympiad Prep

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Algebra Difficulty 4.9 AIME Prove it United States

Problem:

For any positive integer n3n \geq 3, show that you can write 11 as a sum of nn fractions with numerator 11 and different denominators.

Solution

Solution:

For n=3n=3, we can write
1=12+13+16. 1 = \frac{1}{2} + \frac{1}{3} + \frac{1}{6}.
For n=4n=4, we can write
1=12+13+19+118. 1 = \frac{1}{2} + \frac{1}{3} + \frac{1}{9} + \frac{1}{18}.
We claim that we can continue this pattern by breaking the smallest fraction into two smaller fractions, such that the smallest fraction always has even denominator. We can show this inductively. Assume this is true for some nn, where the smallest fraction is 12m\frac{1}{2m}. Then we can break the 12m\frac{1}{2m} into
12m=13m+16m \frac{1}{2m} = \frac{1}{3m} + \frac{1}{6m}
which creates a sum of n+1n+1 distinct fractions with numerator 11, and the largest denominator is still even. This completes our induction.

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