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Algebra Difficulty 3.8 AMC 10/12 Find the answer

What is the minimum value of f(x)=x1+2x1+3x1++119x1f(x)=\left|x-1\right| + \left|2x-1\right| + \left|3x-1\right| + \cdots + \left|119x - 1 \right|?

Pick one

Solution

If we graph each term separately, we will notice that all of the zeros occur at 1m\frac{1}{m}, where mm is any integer from 11 to 119119, inclusive: mx1=0    mx=1    x=1m|mx-1|=0\implies mx=1\implies x=\frac{1}{m}.
The minimum value of f(x)f(x) occurs where the absolute value of the sum of the slopes is at a minimum 0\ge 0, since it is easy to see that the value will be increasing on either side. That means the minimum must happen at some 1m\frac{1}{m}.
The sum of the slopes at x=1mx = \frac{1}{m} is
\begin{align*}&\sum_{i=m+1}^{119}i - \sum_{i=1}^{m}i\\ &=\sum_{i=1}^{119}i - 2\sum_{i=1}^{m}i\\ &=-m^2-m+7140\end{align*}
Now we want to minimize m2m+7140-m^2-m+7140. The zeros occur at 85-85 and 8484, which means the slope is 00 where m=84,85m = 84, 85.
We can now verify that both x=184x=\frac{1}{84} and x=185x=\frac{1}{85} yield 49 (A)\boxed{49\ \textbf{(A)}}.
You can also think of the slopes playing 'tug of war', where the slope of each absolute function upon passing its xx-intercept is negated, positively tugging on the remaining negative slopes.
The sum of the slopes is 1+2+3+4119=m=1119m=1191202=60119=71401+2+3+4\dots 119=\sum_{m=1}^{119}m=\frac{119\cdot 120}{2}=60\cdot 119=7140
So we need to find the least integer aa such that 1+2+3+a=n=1an=a(a+1)271402=3570:1+2+3+\dots a=\sum_{n=1}^an=\frac{a(a+1)}{2}\ge \frac{7140}{2}=3570:
a(a+1)7140    a2+a71400a=84 exactly!a(a+1)\ge 7140\implies a^2+a-7140\ge 0\rightarrow a=84\text{ exactly!}
This "exactly" means that the slope is ZERO between the whole interval x(185,184)x\in\left(\frac{1}{85},\frac{1}{84}\right). We can explicitly evaluate both to check that they are both equal to the desired minimum value of f(x)f(x):
84+83++2+1+1+2++33+3485=84(85)/2+34(35)/285=85(14+84)/285=49\frac{84+83+\dots+2+1+1+2+\dots+33+34}{85}=\frac{84(85)/2+34(35)/2}{85}=\frac{85(14+84)/2}{85}=49
83+82++2+1+1+2++34+3584=83(84)/2+35(36)/284=84(15+83)/284=49\frac{83+82+\dots+2+1+1+2+\dots+34+35}{84}=\frac{83(84)/2+35(36)/2}{84}=\frac{84(15+83)/2}{84}=49
Thus the minimum value of f(x)f(x) is 4949.

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Source: NuminaMath-1.5, licensed Apache-2.0. Statement and solution reproduced as published; topic and difficulty added by this site.