Maths Olympiad Prep

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Combinatorics Difficulty 5.5 AIME, harder Find the answer

Let SS be a set of intervals defined recursively as follows: Initially, [1,1000][1,1000] is the only interval in SS. If lrl \neq r and [l,r]S[l, r] \in S, then both [l,l+r2],[l+r2+1,r]S\left[l,\left\lfloor\frac{l+r}{2}\right\rfloor\right],\left[\left\lfloor\frac{l+r}{2}\right\rfloor+1, r\right] \in S. An integer ii is chosen uniformly at random from the range [1,1000][1,1000]. What is the expected number of intervals in SS which contain ii?

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

Solution

The answer is given by computing the sum of the lengths of all intervals in SS and dividing this value by 1000, where the length of an interval [i,j][i, j] is given by ji+1j-i+1. An interval may be categorized based on how many times [1,1000][1,1000] must be split to attain it. An interval that is derived from splitting [1,1000]k[1,1000] k times will be called a kk-split. The only 0-split is [1,1000][1,1000], with a total length of 1000. The 1-splits are [1,500][1,500] and [501,1000][501,1000], with a total length of 1000. As long as none of the kk-splits have length 1, the (k+1)(k+1)-splits will have the same total length. Since the length of the intervals is reduced by half each time (rounded down), we find that the sum of the lengths of the kk-splits is 1000 for 0k90 \leq k \leq 9. Note that the 9-splits consist of 21010002^{10}-1000 intervals of length 1 and 1000291000-2^{9} intervals of length 2. Then the 10-splits consist of 2(100029)2\left(1000-2^{9}\right) intervals of length 1, with total length 2(100029)2\left(1000-2^{9}\right). The total interval length across all splits is equal to 12(1000)21012(1000)-2^{10}, so our answer is 122101000=10.97612-\frac{2^{10}}{1000}=10.976

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