2006 AIME II Problems/Problem 11

Problem

A sequence is defined as follows $a_1=a_2=a_3=1,$ and, for all positive integers $n, a_{n+3}=a_{n+2}+a_{n+1}+a_n.$ Given that $a_{28}=6090307, a_{29}=11201821,$ and $a_{30}=20603361,$ find the remainder when $\sum^{28}_{k=1} a_k$ is divided by 1000.

Solution

Solution 1

Define the sum as $s$ . Since $a_n\ = a_{n + 3} - a_{n + 2} - a_{n + 1}$ , the sum will be:

$s = a_{28} + \sum^{27}_{k=1} (a_{k+3}-a_{k+2}-a_{k+1}) \\ s = a_{28} + \left(\sum^{30}_{k=4} a_{k} - \sum^{29}_{k=3} a_{k}\right) - \left(\sum^{28}_{k=2} a_{k}\right)\\ s = a_{28} + (a_{30} - a_{3}) - \left(\sum^{28}_{k=2} a_{k}\right) = a_{28} + a_{30} - a_{3} - (s - a_{1})\\ s = -s + a_{28} + a_{30}$

Thus $s = \frac{a_{28} + a_{30}}{2}$ , and $a_{28},\,a_{30}$ are both given; the last four digits of their sum is $3668$ , and half of that is $1834$ . Therefore, the answer is $\boxed{834}$ .

Solution 2

Very bad solution: Brute Force. Since the problem asks for the answer of the end value when divided by 1000, it wouldn't be that difficult because you only need to keep track of the last 3 digits.

Solution 3 (some guessing involved)

All terms in the sequence are sums of previous terms, so the sum of all terms up to a certain point must be some linear combination of the first three terms. Also, we are given $a_{28}, a_{29},$ and $a_{30}$ , so we can guess that there is some way to use them in a formula. Namely, we guess that there exists some $p, q, r$ such that $\sum_{k=1}^{n}{a_k} = pa_n+qa_{n+1}+ra_{n+2}$ . From here, we list out the first few terms of the sequence and the cumulative sums, and with a little bit of substitution and algebra we see that $(p, q, r) = (\frac{1}{2}, 0, \frac{1}{2})$ , at least for the first few terms. From this, we have that $\sum_{k=1}^{28}{a_k} = \frac{a_{28}+a_{30}}{2} \equiv{\boxed{834}}(\mod 1000)$ .

Solution by zeroman

2006 AIME II (Problems • Answer Key • Resources)
Preceded by Problem 10	Followed by Problem 12
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