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59th Ukrainian National Mathematical Olympiad

Ukraine algebra

Problem

For any natural number find integers such that the following equality holds:
Solution
Let us first find rational numbers satisfying the equality, and then multiply them by the least common multiplier of the denominators in order to obtain integers. One can fix , , ..., . Let us rewrite the equation as follows:

All , are negative, and from the last inequality it follows that . Finally, we can get aforementioned integers as follows:
Final answer
One valid construction is: for k from 1 to n−1, set a_k = −2^{n−k}(2^{n−1}−1), and set a_n = 2^{n−1}.

Techniques

FractionsTelescoping series