SENIOR SOLUTIONS 1996

1. When Nick was as old as Olga is now, their aunt was one year younger
than the sum of Nick and Olgas current ages. How old was Nick when
his aunt was his current age? (You may assume that their aunt is older
than both Nick and Olga, and that Nick is older than Olga.)
Solution.
See intermediate Q. 2.
2. You are given a cardboard cubical box without a lid. (Its sides and
bottom are squares of unit area.) Making as many straight line cuts
as necessary, first cut it so that it can be opened out into a connected
planar shape, (in plain language, cut the box so that it can be folded
out flat), and then cut it into three pieces that can be put together to
make a square of area 5.
Solution.
See intermediate Q. 5.
3. Prove that any integer a > 0 can be uniquely represented in the form
a = an n! + an1 (n 1)! + an2 (n 2)! + + a2 2! + a1 1!
where the coefficients ak , k = 1, . . . , n are integers, 0 ak k, an > 0.
Solution.
We prove an equivalent statement by induction. Any non-negative
integer a < (n + 1)! is uniquely representable as
a = an n! + an1 (n 1)! + an2 (n 2)! + + a2 2! + a1 1!
with 0 ak k for all k = 1, . . . , n. (Note that we are allowing an to
be zero, but fixing n).
The case n = 1 is obvious as 1 = 1.1!. Let us prove it is true for a < (n+
1)! assuming it is true for all numbers less than n!. Dividing a by n! we

get a = an n! + rn where 0 an n (since (n + 1)n! = (n + 1)! > a) and

0 rn < n!. By the inductive hypothesis, rn = an1 (n 1)! + + a1 1!
with 0 ak k so the number a can be represented as required.
To prove uniqueness, notice that the number of sets (an , an1 , . . . , a1 )
of coefficients in our representation is (n + 1)(n) 2 = (n + 1)!. Each
of these corresponds to one of the (n + 1)! non-negative integers less
than (n + 1)! This correspondence goes both ways, since the above
representation of a restores a from any given set (an , an1 , . . . , a1 ). Thus
each set corresponds to an integer, and the correspondence is 1 : 1.
4. Given n, find a function f whose nth iterate f (f ( f (x) )) (with f
applied n times) is equal to 2x + 1 for all x.
Solution.
There are many solutions. Probably the easiest is to be inspired enough
to try a linear solution, that is y = f (x) = ax + b. Then
f (2) (x) = f (f (x)) = a2 x + b + ab,
f (3) (x) = a3 x + b(1 + a + a2 ),
f (n) (x) = an x + b(1 + a + a2 + + an1 )
= an x + b(an 1)/(a 1),
can be easily proved by induction.
From
an x +
1

b(an 1)
= 2x 1
a1
1

we see that a = 2 n and b = 1 2 n .

5. Three lines are drawn through an internal point of a triangle parallel
to its sides. The three line segments within the triangle (as shown on
the figure) turn out to have the same length. Given the triangles side
lengths a, b and c, find the length of the segments.

i
m

S
g

Solution.
Let the required line segment be L. Let Oh = m, Oe = n, Cg = p, Bf =
g. Now Of Be and hOgC are parallelograms, so m = p and n = q.
Hence L = m + n = p + q. Now let CF = R and Bg = S. Then
L = a (R + S a) = 2a (R + S). Now because lines parallel to a
side split the sides of a triangle in equal ratios, we have:
R
L
=
a
c
and

L
S
= .
a
b

Therefore R = La
, S = La
, so R + S = L(ab+ac)
, so from the above
c
b
bc
equation L = 2a (R + S), we immediately obtain
L=

2abc
.
ab + bc + ac

6. Let X be the set of all lattice points in the plane. That is to say, the set
of points (x, y) with integer coordinates. By a path of length n we mean
a set of points (p0 , p1 , p2 , . . . , pn ) of X such that pi and pi1 are adjacent
points on the lattice for i = 0, 1, 2, . . . , n. Let Cn denote the number of
distinct paths of length n starting at the origin (i.e. p0 =(0,0)) and
ending at any point on the line y = 0. Prove that Cn = 2n
, where
n

2n
n

(2n)!
.
n!n!

Solution.
There are a number of ways to solve this problem. Here is one. Encode
the steps as follows: 00 = up, 11 = down, 01 = left, 11 = right. Then
to finish on the line y = 0 means that any path encoded as above must
have as many up steps as down steps - but the left and right steps
are irrelevant. Any path of n steps contains 2n symbols which are
either 0 or 1. However the paths ending on y = 0 must have precisely n
1s. So the problem reduces to finding the number of sequencesof the
above symbols of length 2n with exactly n 1s - and there are 2n
of
n
these. That solution requires inspiration. A more mechanical solution,
but one that requires a bit of knowledge of generating functions is the
following:
At each step one can go North, South, East or West. Denote these
steps by x, 1/x, y, 1/y repectively. All possible paths of length n are
generated by considering the expansion of (x + 1/x + y + 1/y)n . (Remember, there are 4n possible paths, as at each step one can choose any
of 4 directions.) The paths that lie on the y-axis are those that have
no coefficient of y in the above expansion. Thus for n = 3 for example,
the only terms that contribute are 1/x3 + 9/x + 9x + x3 , and the sum
of the coefficients is 20, the total number of paths in this case. So the
problem is reduced to finding the coefficients in the above expansion
with no power of y. While this can be done, life is simpler if we observe
that East and West steps are irrelevant, so we can replace y by 1, and
consider the expansion of (x + 2 + 1/x)n and askfor the coefficient of
the constant term. But this can be rewritten as ( x + 1x )2n , and it is
clear that the constant term is

2n
n