Let $N$ be a positive integer. Define a sequence $a_0,a_1,\ldots$ by $a_0=0$, $a_1=1$, and $a_{n+1}+a_{n-1}=a_n(2-1/N)$ for $n\ge1$. Prove that $a_n<\sqrt{N+1}$ for all $n$. [i]Evan O'Dorney.[/i]

[b]p1.[/b] What is $20\times 20 - 19\times 19$? [b]p2.[/b] Andover has a total of $1440$ students and teachers as well as a $1 : 5$ teacher-to-student ratio (for every teacher, there are exactly $5$ students). In addition, every student is either a boarding student or a day student, and $70\%$ of the students are boarding students. How many day students does Andover have? [b]p3.[/b] The time is $2:20$. If the acute angle between the hour hand and the minute hand of the clock measures $x$ degrees, find $x$. [img]https://cdn.artofproblemsolving.com/attachments/b/a/a18b089ae016b15580ec464c3e813d5cb57569.png[/img] [b]p4.[/b] Point $P$ is located on segment $AC$ of square $ABCD$ with side length $10$ such that $AP >CP$. If the area of quadrilateral $ABPD$ is $70$, what is the area of $\vartriangle PBD$? [b]p5.[/b] Andrew always sweetens his tea with sugar, and he likes a $1 : 7$ sugar-to-unsweetened tea ratio. One day, he makes a $100$ ml cup of unsweetened tea but realizes that he has run out of sugar. Andrew decides to borrow his sister's jug of pre-made SUPERSWEET tea, which has a $1 : 2$ sugar-to-unsweetened tea ratio. How much SUPERSWEET tea, in ml,does Andrew need to add to his unsweetened tea so that the resulting tea is his desired sweetness? [b]p6.[/b] Jeremy the architect has built a railroad track across the equator of his spherical home planet which has a radius of exactly $2020$ meters. He wants to raise the entire track $6$ meters off the ground, everywhere around the planet. In order to do this, he must buymore track, which comes from his supplier in bundles of $2$ meters. What is the minimum number of bundles he must purchase? Assume the railroad track was originally built on the ground. [b]p7.[/b] Mr. DoBa writes the numbers $1, 2, 3,..., 20$ on the board. Will then walks up to the board, chooses two of the numbers, and erases them from the board. Mr. DoBa remarks that the average of the remaining $18$ numbers is exactly $11$. What is the maximum possible value of the larger of the two numbers that Will erased? [b]p8.[/b] Nathan is thinking of a number. His number happens to be the smallest positive integer such that if Nathan doubles his number, the result is a perfect square, and if Nathan triples his number, the result is a perfect cube. What is Nathan's number? [b]p9.[/b] Let $S$ be the set of positive integers whose digits are in strictly increasing order when read from left to right. For example, $1$, $24$, and $369$ are all elements of $S$, while $20$ and $667$ are not. If the elements of $S$ are written in increasing order, what is the $100$th number written? [b]p10.[/b] Find the largest prime factor of the expression $2^{20} + 2^{16} + 2^{12} + 2^{8} + 2^{4} + 1$. [b]p11.[/b] Christina writes down all the numbers from $1$ to $2020$, inclusive, on a whiteboard. What is the sum of all the digits that she wrote down? [b]p12.[/b] Triangle $ABC$ has side lengths $AB = AC = 10$ and $BC = 16$. Let $M$ and $N$ be the midpoints of segments $BC$ and $CA$, respectively. There exists a point $P \ne A$ on segment $AM$ such that $2PN = PC$. What is the area of $\vartriangle PBC$? [b]p13.[/b] Consider the polynomial $$P(x) = x^4 + 3x^3 + 5x^2 + 7x + 9.$$ Let its four roots be $a, b, c, d$. Evaluate the expression $$(a + b + c)(a + b + d)(a + c + d)(b + c + d).$$ [b]p14.[/b] Consider the system of equations $$|y - 1| = 4 -|x - 1|$$ $$|y| =\sqrt{|k - x|}.$$ Find the largest $k$ for which this system has a solution for real values $x$ and $y$. [b]p16.[/b] Let $T_n = 1 + 2 + ... + n$ denote the $n$th triangular number. Find the number of positive integers $n$ less than $100$ such that $n$ and $T_n$ have the same number of positive integer factors. [b]p17.[/b] Let $ABCD$ be a square, and let $P$ be a point inside it such that $PA = 4$, $PB = 2$, and $PC = 2\sqrt2$. What is the area of $ABCD$? [b]p18.[/b] The Fibonacci sequence $\{F_n\}$ is defined as $F_0 = 0$, $F_1 = 1$, and $F_{n+2}= F_{n+1} + F_n$ for all integers $n \ge 0$. Let $$ S =\dfrac{1}{F_6 + \frac{1}{F_6}}+\dfrac{1}{F_8 + \frac{1}{F_8}}+\dfrac{1}{F_{10} +\frac{1}{F_{10}}}+\dfrac{1}{F_{12} + \frac{1}{F_{12}}}+ ... $$ Compute $420S$. [b]p19.[/b] Let $ABCD$ be a square with side length $5$. Point $P$ is located inside the square such that the distances from $P$ to $AB$ and $AD$ are $1$ and $2$ respectively. A point $T$ is selected uniformly at random inside $ABCD$. Let $p$ be the probability that quadrilaterals $APCT$ and $BPDT$ are both not self-intersecting and have areas that add to no more than $10$. If $p$ can be expressed in the form $\frac{m}{n}$ for relatively prime positive integers $m$ and $n$, find $m + n$. Note: A quadrilateral is self-intersecting if any two of its edges cross. PS. You should use hide for answers. Collected [url=https://artofproblemsolving.com/community/c5h2760506p24143309]here[/url].

A sequence of numbers $ a_1, a_2, a_3, ...$ satisfies (i) $ a_1 \equal{} \frac{1}{2}$ (ii) $ a_1\plus{}a_2 \plus{} \cdots \plus{} a_n \equal{} n^2 a_n \ (n \geq 1)$ Determine the value of $ a_n \ (n \geq 1)$.

For positive integers $ n,$ the numbers $ f(n)$ are defined inductively as follows: $ f(1) \equal{} 1,$ and for every positive integer $ n,$ $ f(n\plus{}1)$ is the greatest integer $ m$ such that there is an arithmetic progression of positive integers $ a_1 < a_2 < \ldots < a_m \equal{} n$ for which \[ f(a_1) \equal{} f(a_2) \equal{} \ldots \equal{} f(a_m).\] Prove that there are positive integers $ a$ and $ b$ such that $ f(an\plus{}b) \equal{} n\plus{}2$ for every positive integer $ n.$

Let $a_1, a_2, \ldots, a_{2021}$ be a sequence, where each $a_i$ is a positive factor of $2021$. How many possible values are there for the product $a_1 a_2 \cdots a_{2021}$?

Let $\{f_n\}_{n\ge 1}$ be the Fibonacci sequence, defined by $f_1 = f_2 = 1$, and for all positive integers $n$, $f_{n+2} = f_{n+1} + f_n$. Prove that the following inequality takes place for all positive integers $n$: $${n \choose 1}f_1 +{n \choose 2}f_2+... +{n \choose n}f_n < \frac{(2n + 2)^n}{n!}$$ .

Let $S_n$ denote the set of permutations of the sequence $(1,2,\dots, n)$. For every permutation $\pi=(\pi_1, \dots, \pi_n)\in S_n$, let $\mathrm{inv}(\pi)$ be the number of pairs $1\le i < j \le n$ with $\pi_i>\pi_j$; i. e. the number of inversions in $\pi$. Denote by $f(n)$ the number of permutations $\pi\in S_n$ for which $\mathrm{inv}(\pi)$ is divisible by $n+1$. Prove that there exist infinitely many primes $p$ such that $f(p-1)>\frac{(p-1)!}{p}$, and infinitely many primes $p$ such that $f(p-1)<\frac{(p-1)!}{p}$. (Proposed by Fedor Petrov, St. Petersburg State University)

Determine the greatest positive integer $k$ that satisfies the following property: The set of positive integers can be partitioned into $k$ subsets $A_1, A_2, \ldots, A_k$ such that for all integers $n \geq 15$ and all $i \in \{1, 2, \ldots, k\}$ there exist two distinct elements of $A_i$ whose sum is $n.$ [i]Proposed by Igor Voronovich, Belarus[/i]

The sequence of $a_n$ is determined by the relation $$a_{n+1}=\frac{k+a_n}{1-a_n}$$ where $k > 0$. It is known that $a_{13} = a_1$. What values can $k$ take?

A word is a sequence of n letters of the alphabet {a, b, c, d}. A word is said to be complicated if it contains two consecutive groups of identic letters. The words caab, baba and cababdc, for example, are complicated words, while bacba and dcbdc are not. A word that is not complicated is a simple word. Prove that the numbers of simple words with n letters is greater than $2^n$, if n is a positive integer.

Find the arithmetic sequences of $ 5 $ integers $ n_1,n_2,n_3,n_4,n_5 $ that verify $ 5|n_1,2|n_2,11|n_3,7|n_4,17|n_5. $

An integer $n\geq 2$ having exactly $s$ positive divisors $1=d_1<d_2<\cdots<d_s=n$ is said to be [i]good[/i] if there exists an integer $k$, with $2\leq k\leq s$, such that $d_k>1+d_1+\cdots+d_{k-1}$. An integer $n\geq 2$ is said to be [i]bad[/i] if it is not good. (a) Show that there are infinitely many bad integers. (b) Prove that, among any seven consecutive integers all greater than $2$, there are always at least four good integers. (c) Show that there are infinitely many sequences of seven consecutive good integers.

Let $c \ge 1$ be an integer. Define a sequence of positive integers by $a_1 = c$ and \[a_{n+1}=a_n^3-4c\cdot a_n^2+5c^2\cdot a_n+c\] for all $n\ge 1$. Prove that for each integer $n \ge 2$ there exists a prime number $p$ dividing $a_n$ but none of the numbers $a_1 , \ldots , a_{n -1}$ . [i]Proposed by Austria[/i]

Let $(a_1, a_2,..., a_n)$ and $(b_1, b_2, ..., b_n)$ be two sequences of positive real numbers. Let $\pi$ be a permutation of the set $\{1, 2, ..., n\}$, for which the sum $a_{\pi(1)}(b_{\pi(1)}+b_{\pi(2)}+...+b_{\pi(n)})+a_{\pi(2)}(b_{\pi(3)}+b_{\pi(3)}+...+b_{\pi(n)})+...+a_{\pi(n)}b_{\pi(n)}$ is minimal. Proce for this permutation $\pi$, that $$ \frac{a_{\pi(1)}}{b_{\pi(1)}}\le \frac{a_{\pi(2})}{b_{\pi(2)}}\le ... \le \frac{a_{\pi(n)}}{b_{\pi(n)}}$$ Application: In an idealized role-playing game you fight against $n$ opponents at the same time. In order to minimize the damage you suffer yourself, you should first take care of your opponent for the ratio of the time it takes to defeat him (if you only focus on him), and the damage it does per second is minimal; next, one should fight the opponent with the second smallest such ratio, and so on.

Let $A = (a_1, a_2, \ldots, a_{2001})$ be a sequence of positive integers. Let $m$ be the number of 3-element subsequences $(a_i,a_j,a_k)$ with $1 \leq i < j < k \leq 2001$, such that $a_j = a_i + 1$ and $a_k = a_j + 1$. Considering all such sequences $A$, find the greatest value of $m$.