Maths Olympiad Prep

Library / /918 of 1394

, 2020

Number theory Difficulty 5.4 AIME, harder Prove it United States

Problem:
Find the unique pair of positive integers (a,b)(a, b) with a<ba < b for which
2020aa2020bb=2 \frac{2020-a}{a} \cdot \frac{2020-b}{b} = 2

Solutions — 2

Solution 1

Solution:
If either aa or bb is larger than 20202020, then both must be for the product to be positive. However, the resulting product would be less than 11, so this case is impossible.

Now, we see that (2020aa,2020bb)\left(\frac{2020-a}{a}, \frac{2020-b}{b}\right) must be in the form (xy,2yx)\left(\frac{x}{y}, \frac{2y}{x}\right), in some order, for relatively prime positive integers xx and yy.

Then 2020a=x+yy\frac{2020}{a} = \frac{x+y}{y} and 2020b=x+2yx\frac{2020}{b} = \frac{x+2y}{x}, so x+yx+y and x+2yx+2y are relatively prime factors of 20202020.

Since x+y<x+2y<2(x+y)x+y < x+2y < 2(x+y), the only possibility is x+y=4x+y = 4, x+2y=5x+2y = 5. Thus, (x,y)=(3,1)(x, y) = (3, 1), and (2020aa,2020bb)=(3,23)\left(\frac{2020-a}{a}, \frac{2020-b}{b}\right) = \left(3, \frac{2}{3}\right) because a<ba < b.

Solving gives (a,b)=(505,1212)(a, b) = (505, 1212).

Solution 2

Solution:
We rearrange to find that (a+2020)(b+2020)=220202(a+2020)(b+2020) = 2 \cdot 2020^{2}. Note that a+2020a+2020 and b+2020b+2020 are both less than 4040<10124040 < 101^{2}, so they must both be divisible by 101101. Hence, we divide out a factor of 1012101^{2} and solve the equivalent problem of (a+20)(b+20)=800(a' + 20)(b' + 20) = 800, where a=a101a' = \frac{a}{101} and b=b101b' = \frac{b}{101}.

Because each factor must be less than 4040101=40\frac{4040}{101} = 40, we get that (a+20,b+20)=(25,32)(a' + 20, b' + 20) = (25, 32), which yields (a,b)=(505,1212)(a, b) = (505, 1212).

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