Difference between revisions of "2016 AMC 10B Problems/Problem 16"
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The sum of an infinite geometric series is a positive number <math>S</math>, and the second term in the series is <math>1</math>. What is the smallest possible value of <math>S?</math> | The sum of an infinite geometric series is a positive number <math>S</math>, and the second term in the series is <math>1</math>. What is the smallest possible value of <math>S?</math> |
Revision as of 21:34, 29 August 2016
Contents
Problem 16
The sum of an infinite geometric series is a positive number , and the second term in the series is
. What is the smallest possible value of
Solution
The sum of an infinite geometric series is of the form:
where
is the first term and
is the ratio whose absolute value is less than 1.
We know that the second term is the first term multiplied by the ratio.
In other words:
Thus, the sum is the following:
Since we want the minimum value of this expression, we want the maximum value for the denominator,
.
The maximum x-value of a quadratic with negative
is
.
Plugging
into the quadratic yields:
Therefore, the minimum sum of our infinite geometric sequence is .
(Solution by akaashp11)
Solution 2
After observation we realize that in order to minimize our sum with
being the reciprocal of r. The common ratio
has to be in the form of
with
being an integer as anything more than
divided by
would give a larger sum than a ratio in the form of
.
The first term has to be , so then in order to minim6tt5r5y,7uerthrtdhdthize the sum, we have minimize
.
The smallest possible value for such that it is an integer that's greater than
is
. So our first term is
and our common ratio is
. Thus the sum is
or
.
Solution 2 by No_One
See Also
2016 AMC 10B (Problems • Answer Key • Resources) | ||
Preceded by Problem 15 |
Followed by Problem 17 | |
1 • 2 • 3 • 4 • 5 • 6 • 7 • 8 • 9 • 10 • 11 • 12 • 13 • 14 • 15 • 16 • 17 • 18 • 19 • 20 • 21 • 22 • 23 • 24 • 25 | ||
All AMC 10 Problems and Solutions |
The problems on this page are copyrighted by the Mathematical Association of America's American Mathematics Competitions.
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