Maths Olympiad Prep

Library / /258 of 353

Number theory Difficulty 5.0 AIME, harder Find the answer

Compute the smallest multiple of 63 with an odd number of ones in its base two representation.

A number or a short expression. Fractions can be typed as 3/2, and spacing doesn't matter.

Solution

Notice that 63=26−163=2^{6}-1, so for any aa we know 63a=64a−a=26(a−1)+(64−a)63 a=64 a-a=2^{6}(a-1)+(64-a) As long as a≤64a \leq 64, we know a−1a-1 and 64−a64-a are both integers between 0 and 63 , so the binary representation of 63a63 a is just a−1a-1 followed by 64−a64-a in binary (where we append leading 0 s to make the latter 6 digits). Furthermore, a−1a-1 and 64−a64-a sum to 63=111111263=111111_{2}, so a−1a-1 has 1 s in binary where 64−a64-a has 0 s, and vice versa. Thus, together, they have six 1 s, so 63a63 a will always have six 1 s in binary when a≤64a \leq 64. We can also check 63⋅65=212−163 \cdot 65=2^{12}-1 has twelve 1s, while 63⋅66=2(63⋅33)63 \cdot 66=2(63 \cdot 33) has the same binary representation with an extra 0 at the end, so it also has six 1s. Finally, 63⋅67=212+125=1000001111101263 \cdot 67=2^{12}+125=1000001111101_{2} has seven 1 s, so the answer is 63⋅67=422163 \cdot 67=4221.

Want a route through all this instead of an archive? The track puts 2,000 problems in a working order, from AMC 10 level to the IMO shortlist.

Source: Omni-MATH, licensed Apache-2.0. Statement reproduced verbatim; metadata (topic, difficulty) added by this project.