Maths Olympiad Prep

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Number theory Difficulty 5.6 AIME, harder Find the answer

Let PP be the number to partition 2013 into an ordered tuple of prime numbers? What is log2(P)\log _{2}(P)? If your answer is AA and the correct answer is CC, then your score on this problem will be 1252(min(CA,AC)35)\left\lfloor\frac{125}{2}\left(\min \left(\frac{C}{A}, \frac{A}{C}\right)-\frac{3}{5}\right)\right\rfloor or zero, whichever is larger.

A number or a short expression. Spacing and $ signs are ignored.

Solution

We use the following facts and heuristics. (1) The ordered partitions of nn into any positive integers (not just primes) is 2n12^{n-1}. This can be guessed by checking small cases and finding a pattern, and is not difficult to prove. (2) The partitions of 2013n\frac{2013}{n} into any positive integers equals the partitions of 2013 into integers from the set {n,2n,3n,}\{n, 2 n, 3 n, \cdots\}. (3) The small numbers matter more when considering partitions. (4) The set of primes {2,3,5,7,}\{2,3,5,7, \cdots\} is close in size (near the small numbers) to {3,6,9,}\{3,6,9, \cdots\} or {2,4,6,}\{2,4,6, \cdots\}. (5) The prime numbers get very sparse compared to the above two sets in the larger numbers. Thus, using these heuristics, the number of partitions of 2013 into primes is approximately 22013312^{\frac{2013}{3}}-1 or 22013212^{\frac{2013}{2}-1}, which, taking logarithms, give 670 and 1005.5, respectively. By (5), we should estimate something that is slightly less than these numbers.

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