A sequence of 11 positive real numbers, , satisfies and and for every integer with . For example when . There are such sequences. What are the rightmost two digits of ?
Solution
Suppose that, for some integer , we have and . The equation can be re-written as . Since and , squaring both sides of the equation gives an equivalent equation which is . Manipulating algebraically, we obtain the following equivalent equations: , , , . Therefore, the given relationship is equivalent to or . Returning to the sequence notation, we now know that it is the case that (that is, ) or . Putting this another way, each term in the sequence can be obtained from the previous term either by multiplying by 4 or by dividing by 4. We are told that and . We note . We can think of moving along the sequence from to by making 10 "steps", each of which involves either multiplying by 4 or dividing by 4. If there are steps in which we multiply by 4 and steps in which we divide by 4, then which gives or and so . In other words, the sequence involves 7 steps of multiplying by 4 and 3 steps of dividing by 4. These steps completely define the sequence. The number of possible sequences, , equals the number of ways of arranging these 10 steps, which equals . (If combinatorial notation is unfamiliar, we could systematically count the number of arrangements instead.) Therefore, . The rightmost two digits of are 20.