2002 AIME II Problems/Problem 6
Problem
Find the integer that is closest to .
Solution
You know that .
So if you pull the out of the summation, you get
.
Now that telescopes, leaving you with:
is not enough to bring lower than so the answer is
If you didn't know , here's how you can find it out:
We know . We can use the process of fractional decomposition to split this into two fractions thus: for some A and B.
Solving for A and B gives $\1 = (n-2)A + (n+2)B$ (Error compiling LaTeX. Unknown error_msg) or $\1 = n(A+B)+ 2(B-A)$ (Error compiling LaTeX. Unknown error_msg). Since there is no n term on the left hand side, and by inspection $\1 = 2(B-A)$ (Error compiling LaTeX. Unknown error_msg). Solving yields
Then we have and we can continue as before.
See also
2002 AIME II (Problems • Answer Key • Resources) | ||
Preceded by Problem 5 |
Followed by Problem 7 | |
1 • 2 • 3 • 4 • 5 • 6 • 7 • 8 • 9 • 10 • 11 • 12 • 13 • 14 • 15 | ||
All AIME Problems and Solutions |