We say that a positive integer with an even number of digits is "correct" if, reading the individual digits aloud, we obtain a correct description of the number itself. More precisely, if every digit in an odd position indicates how many times the following digit appears in the whole number. For example, 1210 is correct, because it has "one 2, one 0", as is 2121, because it has "two 1, two 1", while 1031 is not, because it declares to have "one 0, three 1", when it actually has two 1's.
a. Prove that there are more than 2019 correct numbers. b. Prove that the correct integers are finite in number. c. Find the number of digits of the largest correct number.
Solution
Solution:
a. The number A=12131415161718 is correct. Since a correct description of the number does not depend on the order, by splitting A into blocks of two consecutive digits
and permuting them among themselves we obtain different correct numbers. The number of permutations of seven distinct blocks is 7!=5040>2019
b. Every correct number is made up of two-digit blocks ab whose first digit describes the second. A digit that is described in some block can appear at most 9 times in the whole number: otherwise it could not have been correctly described in the block in question. This observation immediately limits the number of blocks to nine per digit, that is 9⋅10=90, hence the number of digits to 90⋅2=180. The integers with at most 180 digits (and, consequently, the correct ones) are finite in number.
c. Let us refine the upper estimate from the previous point: if a natural number has more than 91 digits then, by the pigeonhole principle, there is a digit that appears at least 10 times and that therefore can never be described. Observing that the number of blocks in a correct number is at most nine times the number of digits that are described, we obtain an upper bound of 9⋅9=81 blocks, which corresponds to a bound of 81⋅2=162 digits.
We now expect that the largest correct number is G=9blocks9898…989blocks9797…97…9blocks9090…90, but it will not be necessary to prove this. Once it has been observed that it has 9⋅9⋅2=162 digits, the proof is concluded: even if there existed a correct number larger than G, it would still have 162 digits.
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Source: MathNet,
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