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Algebra Difficulty 7.0 National olympiad, round 2 Prove it Netherlands

Felix chooses a positive integer as the starting number and writes it on the board. He then repeats the next step: he replaces the number nn on the board by 12n\frac{1}{2}n if nn is even and by n2+3n^2 + 3 if nn is odd. For how many choices of starting numbers below 2023 will Felix never write a number of more than four digits on the board?

Solution

We first show that if Felix starts with an odd number, the next two numbers he writes down will be even. Suppose Felix starts with an odd number nn. Then the next number he writes down is n2+3n^2+3. We must show that n2+3n^2+3 is even, and 12(n2+3)\frac{1}{2}(n^2+3) is even as well. In other words, n2+3n^2+3 must be divisible by 4. Since nn is odd, we can write n=2k+1n = 2k+1 for a non-negative integer kk. Then it holds that
n2+3=(2k+1)2+3=4k2+4k+4=4(k2+k+1) n^2 + 3 = (2k + 1)^2 + 3 = 4k^2 + 4k + 4 = 4(k^2 + k + 1)
and this is indeed divisible by 4.

Suppose Felix starts with an odd number. Then the next number he writes down is divisible by 4, as we saw above. So the next two numbers Felix gets by dividing by 2 each time. The result, k2+k+1k^2 + k + 1, is an odd number, independent of kk being even or odd, as one of the two factors of k2+k=k(k+1)k^2 + k = k(k+1) is even. Then the same three steps follow again: squaring plus 3, dividing by 2, and dividing by 2 again, and these three steps keep repeating. We are going to show that for odd n5n \ge 5, the odd number after three steps is greater than nn. In that case, the process is going to produce larger and larger numbers and eventually Felix will write down a number of more than four digits. The inequality we want to check is 14(n2+3)>n\frac{1}{4}(n^2+3) > n, or, equivalently, n24n+3>0n^2 - 4n + 3 > 0, or, equivalently, (n2)2>1(n-2)^2 > 1. This is indeed true for n5n \ge 5. Only for the odd starting numbers 1 and 3 do the numbers remain small: this gives the repetitions 14211-4-2-1 and 312633-12-6-3.

the numbers after that keep getting bigger. Only if repetitive dividing by 2 ends up with 1 or 3, the numbers after that always remain less than four digits. Those are numbers of the form 2i2^i or 32i3 \cdot 2^i. Of the first form, 11 are smaller than 2023 (20=12^0 = 1 to 210=10242^{10} = 1024) and of the second form, 10 are smaller than 2023 (320=33 \cdot 2^0 = 3 to 329=15363 \cdot 2^9 = 1536). So in total there are 21 starting numbers where Felix will never write a number of more than four digits on the board.

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Source: MathNet, licensed CC-BY-4.0. Statement and solution reproduced as published; topic and difficulty added by this site.