For a point in the Cartesian plane, let . If is the set of all so that the sequence approaches , then the area of can be expressed as for some positive real number . Compute .
Solution
For a point , let , where is a nontrivial third root of unity. Then Applying this recursively gives us . Thus the condition is equivalent to . The region of such points is the preimage of the unit disk (area ) upon the "shear" sending to . This shear multiplies areas by a factor of , so the original area was .
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.