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PrintXXVI OBM
Brazil algebra
Problem
Let be a sequence of integer numbers such that , . Is it possible that more than half of the elements are negative?
Solution
The answer is yes. For instance, consider , and , sufficiently large. All 's are polynomials in and, for all large its sign is equal to the sign of the coefficient of the term of greatest degree. Let such term. Then Let's prove by induction that, for , , which is equivalent to prove that the degree of is less than the degree of . This is true for . Suppose that it is true for all less than . So the degree of is less than the degree of because by the induction hypothesis the degree of is less than the degree of and we're done. So the sign of is equal to the sign of for . Thus the signs of the sequence are which are composed of several cycles of the form . Since 4 out of the 7 terms in each cycle are negative, the result follows.
Final answer
Yes
Techniques
Recurrence relations