Maths Olympiad Prep

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Algebra Difficulty 5.4 AIME, harder Find the answer

Solve for xx: xxxxx=122x\lfloor x\lfloor x\lfloor x\lfloor x\rfloor\rfloor\rfloor\rfloor=122.

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

Solution

This problem can be done without needless casework. (For negative values of xx, the left hand side will be negative, so we only need to consider positive values of xx.) The key observation is that for x[2,3),122x \in[2,3), 122 is an extremely large value for the expression. Indeed, we observe that: x=2xx2(3)1=5xxx3(5)1=14xxxx3(14)1=41xxxxx<3(41)=123\lfloor x\rfloor =2 \lfloor x\lfloor x\rfloor\rfloor \leq 2(3)-1 =5 \lfloor x\lfloor x\lfloor x\rfloor\rfloor\rfloor \leq 3(5)-1 =14 \lfloor x\lfloor x\lfloor x\lfloor x\rfloor\rfloor\rfloor\rfloor \leq 3(14)-1 =41 x\lfloor x\lfloor x\lfloor x\lfloor x\rfloor\rfloor\rfloor\rfloor <3(41) =123. So the expression can only be as large as 122 if ALL of those equalities hold (the the fourth line equaling 40 isn't good enough), and x=12241x=\frac{122}{41}. Note that this value is extremely close to 3. We may check that this value of xx indeed works. Note that the expression is strictly increasing in xx, so x=12241x=\frac{122}{41} is the only value that works.

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