Browse · harp
Printsmc
algebra senior
Problem
Let be a sequence of integers such that (i) for (ii) ; and (iii) . Let and be the minimal and maximal possible values of , respectively. Then
(A)
(B)
(C)
(D)
(E)
Solution
Clearly, we can ignore the possibility that some are zero, as adding/removing such variables does not change the truth value of any condition, nor does it change the value of the sum of cubes. Thus we'll only consider . Also, order of the does not matter, so we are only interested in the counts of the variables of each type. Let of the be equal to , equal to , and equal to . The conditions (ii) and (iii) simplify to: (ii) (iii) and we want to find the maximum and minimum of over all non-negative solutions of the above two equations. Subtracting twice (ii) from (iii) we get . By entering that into one of the two equations and simplifying we get . Thus all the solutions of our system of equations have the form . As all three variables must be non-negative integers, we have and . For of the form the expression we are maximizing/minimizing simplifies to . Clearly, the maximum is achieved for and the minimum for . Their values are and , and therefore .
Final answer
E