A number or a short expression. Fractions can be typed as 3/2, and spacing doesn't matter.
Solution
Rewrite the equation to get x+4x+16x+…+42008x+3=x+1 Squaring both sides yields 4x+…+42008x+3=2x+1 Squaring again yields 16x+…+42008x+3=4x+1 One can see that by continuing this process one gets 42008x+3=22008x+1 so that 2⋅22008x=2. Hence x=4−2008. It is also easy to check that this is indeed a solution to the original equation.
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.