Maths Olympiad Prep

Library / /392 of 860

Algebra Difficulty 5.1 AIME, harder Find the answer

Compute the number of ordered pairs of integers (a,b)(a, b), with 2a,b20212 \leq a, b \leq 2021, that satisfy the equation alogb(a4)=bloga(ba3).a^{\log _{b}\left(a^{-4}\right)}=b^{\log _{a}\left(b a^{-3}\right)}.

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

Solution

Taking loga\log _{a} of both sides and simplifying gives 4logba=(logab)23logab-4 \log _{b} a=\left(\log _{a} b\right)^{2}-3 \log _{a} b Plugging in x=logabx=\log _{a} b and using logba=1logab\log _{b} a=\frac{1}{\log _{a} b} gives x33x2+4=0x^{3}-3 x^{2}+4=0 We can factor the polynomial as (x2)(x2)(x+1)(x-2)(x-2)(x+1), meaning b=a2b=a^{2} or b=a1b=a^{-1}. The second case is impossible since both aa and bb are positive integers. So, we need only count the number of 1<a,b20211<a, b \leq 2021 for which b=a2b=a^{2}, which is 20211=43\lfloor\sqrt{2021}\rfloor-1=43.

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.

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