Maths Olympiad Prep

Library / /11 of 397

Algebra Difficulty 4.5 AIME Prove it Taiwan

Let f(x)f(x) be a polynomial of degree not exceeding nn, and suppose that among the n+1n+1 numbers f(0),f(1),,f(n)f(0), f(1), \dots, f(n), the difference of any two of them is an integer. Prove that f(2011)f(100)f(2011) - f(100) is also an integer.

Solution

Without loss of generality, assume f(0)f(0) is an integer (otherwise, consider instead the function f(x)f(0)f(x)-f(0)). We need only prove that f(2011)f(2011) and f(100)f(100) are both integers.

We use mathematical induction to prove a more general proposition: if an nn-th degree polynomial f(x)f(x) satisfies that f(0),f(1),,f(n)f(0), f(1), \dots, f(n) are all integers, then for any integer xx, f(x)f(x) is also an integer.

First, for the base case n=0n=0, f(x)f(x) is a constant polynomial, so the proposition clearly holds.

Suppose the proposition holds for all n<kn < k. Then for a kk-th degree polynomial f(x)f(x) such that the values f(0),f(1),,f(k)f(0), f(1), \dots, f(k) are all integers, consider the function g(x)=f(x+1)f(x)g(x) = f(x+1) - f(x). It is easy to see that g(x)g(x) is a polynomial of degree <k< k, and that g(0),g(1),,g(k1)g(0), g(1), \dots, g(k-1) are all integers. By the induction hypothesis, g(x)g(x) takes integer values whenever xx is an integer. Since for nonnegative integers xx we have f(x)=f(0)+i=0x1g(i)f(x) = f(0) + \sum_{i=0}^{x-1} g(i), and for negative integers xx we have f(x)=f(0)i=x1g(i)f(x) = f(0) - \sum_{i=x}^{-1} g(i). Therefore, when xx is an integer, f(x)f(x) is also an integer.

Want a route through all this instead of an archive? The track puts 2,000 problems in a working order, from AMC 10 level to the IMO shortlist.

Source: MathNet, licensed CC-BY-4.0. Statement translated into English from zh; metadata (topic, difficulty) added by this project.