Maths Olympiad Prep

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Number theory Difficulty 5.1 AIME, harder Find the answer

Let SS be a set of consecutive positive integers such that for any integer nn in SS, the sum of the digits of nn is not a multiple of 11. Determine the largest possible number of elements of SS.

A number or a short expression. Fractions can be typed as 3/2, and spacing doesn't matter.

Solution

We claim that the answer is 38. This can be achieved by taking the smallest integer in the set to be 999981. Then, our sums of digits of the integers in the set are 45,,53,45,,54,1,,10,2,,1045, \ldots, 53,45, \ldots, 54,1, \ldots, 10,2, \ldots, 10 none of which are divisible by 11.

Suppose now that we can find a larger set SS: then we can then take a 39-element subset of SS which has the same property. Note that this implies that there are consecutive integers a1,a,a+1a-1, a, a+1 for which 10b,,10b+910 b, \ldots, 10 b+9 are all in SS for b=a1,a,a+1b=a-1, a, a+1. Now, let 10a10 a have sum of digits NN. Then, the sums of digits of 10a+1,10a+2,,10a+910 a+1,10 a+2, \ldots, 10 a+9 are N+1,N+2,,N+9N+1, N+2, \ldots, N+9, respectively, and it follows that n1(mod11)n \equiv 1(\bmod 11).

If the tens digit of 10a10 a is not 9, note that 10(a+1)+910(a+1)+9 has sum of digits N+10N+10, which is divisible by 11, a contradiction. On the other hand, if the tens digit of 10a10 a is 9, the sum of digits of 10(a1)10(a-1) is N1N-1, which is also divisible by 11. Thus, SS has at most 38 elements.

Motivation: We want to focus on subsets of SS of the form {10a,,10a+9}\{10 a, \ldots, 10 a+9\}, since the sum of digits goes up by 1 most of the time. If the tens digit of 10a10 a is anything other than 0 or 9, we see that SS can at most contain the integers between 10a810 a-8 and 10a+1810 a+18, inclusive. However, we can attempt to make 10(a1)+910(a-1)+9 have sum of digits congruent to N+9N+9 modulo 11, as to be able to add as many integers to the beginning as possible, which can be achieved by making 10(a1)+910(a-1)+9 end in the appropriate number of nines. We see that we want to take 10(a1)+9=99999910(a-1)+9=999999 so that the sum of digits upon adding 1 goes down by 539(mod11)53 \equiv 9(\bmod 11), giving the example we constructed previously.

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