Maths Olympiad Prep

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Number theory Difficulty 5.0 AIME, harder Find the answer

Compute the smallest multiple of 63 with an odd number of ones in its base two representation.

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

Solution

Notice that 63=26163=2^{6}-1, so for any aa we know 63a=64aa=26(a1)+(64a)63 a=64 a-a=2^{6}(a-1)+(64-a) As long as a64a \leq 64, we know a1a-1 and 64a64-a are both integers between 0 and 63 , so the binary representation of 63a63 a is just a1a-1 followed by 64a64-a in binary (where we append leading 0 s to make the latter 6 digits). Furthermore, a1a-1 and 64a64-a sum to 63=111111263=111111_{2}, so a1a-1 has 1 s in binary where 64a64-a has 0 s, and vice versa. Thus, together, they have six 1 s, so 63a63 a will always have six 1 s in binary when a64a \leq 64. We can also check 6365=212163 \cdot 65=2^{12}-1 has twelve 1s, while 6366=2(6333)63 \cdot 66=2(63 \cdot 33) has the same binary representation with an extra 0 at the end, so it also has six 1s. Finally, 6367=212+125=1000001111101263 \cdot 67=2^{12}+125=1000001111101_{2} has seven 1 s, so the answer is 6367=422163 \cdot 67=4221.

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