Aggressively Mutliplying Percentages

1 % × 2 % × 3 % × × 199 % × 200 % = ? \large \lfloor 1 \% \times 2 \% \times 3 \% \times \cdots \times 199 \% \times 200 \% \rfloor = \ ?

Clarification: \lfloor \cdot \rfloor denotes the floor function .


The answer is 0.

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9 solutions

Michael Mendrin
Jan 3, 2016

We can rewrite this in the non-Floor form as follows

100 100 200 100 n = 1 99 ( 100 n 100 ) ( 100 + n 100 ) = 2 ( 199 10000 ) n = 1 98 ( 10000 n 2 10000 ) \dfrac { 100 }{ 100 } \dfrac { 200 }{ 100 } \displaystyle \prod _{ n=1 }^{ 99 }{ \left( \dfrac { 100-n }{ 100 } \right) \left( \dfrac { 100+n }{ 100 } \right) } =2\left( \dfrac { 199 }{ 10000 } \right) \prod _{ n=1 }^{ 98 }{ \left( \dfrac { 10000-{ n }^{ 2 } }{ 10000 } \right) }

which obviously has a value of less than 1 1 . Hence the Floor is 0 0 .

Great! This is the solution that I'm looking for. We can pair up opposite terms to get a product that is less than 1.

Calvin Lin Staff - 5 years, 5 months ago
Shaun Leong
Jan 2, 2016

By Stirling's approximation, 200 ! 10 0 200 \frac {200!}{100^{200}}

= 2 π 200 ( 200 e ) 200 10 0 200 =\frac {\sqrt{2\pi*200}(\frac {200}{e})^{200}}{100^{200}} = 20 π ( 2 e ) 200 =20 \sqrt{\pi}(\frac {2}{e})^{200}

Note that 2 < e < 3 2<e<3 so ( 2 e ) 200 (\frac {2}{e})^{200} will tend to 0.

20 π 20\sqrt{\pi} is relatively small and will not affect the value much, hence the floored expression is just 0 \boxed {0} .

Akhil Bansal
Jan 1, 2016

= 1 % × 2 % × 3 % × × 199 % × 200 % \large = \lfloor 1 \% \times 2 \% \times 3 \% \times \cdots \times 199 \% \times 200 \% \rfloor = 1 100 × 2 100 × 3 100 × × 199 100 × 200 100 \large =\left\lfloor \dfrac{1}{100} \times \dfrac{2}{100} \times \dfrac{3}{100} \times \cdots \times \dfrac{199}{100} \times \dfrac{200}{100} \right\rfloor = 200 ! 1 0 400 = 7.88.. × 1 0 374 1 0 400 \large = \left\lfloor \dfrac{200!}{10^{400}} \right\rfloor = \left\lfloor \dfrac{7.88.. \times 10^{374}}{10^{400}}\right\rfloor Because denominator is greater than numerator.Hence, answer will be zero


Note : x = 0 x [ 0 , 1 ) \lfloor x \rfloor = 0 \ \forall \ x \in [0,1)

Moderator note:

Without evaluating 200 ! 200! , how can we know that the numerator is smaller than the denominator?

How do you know that the Nr is lesser than the Dr?

Adarsh Kumar - 5 years, 5 months ago

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I have added the value of 200! for more clearity.

Akhil Bansal - 5 years, 5 months ago

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Thanx a lot!But how did you calculate the value of 200 ! 1 0 374 \dfrac{200!}{10^{374}} ?

Adarsh Kumar - 5 years, 5 months ago

Note that 1 0 400 = 10 0 200 10^{400} = 100^{200} . Then, observe that 200 ! = × 99 × 100 × 101 200! = \dotsb \times 99 \times 100 \times 101 \dotsb . But, we have that each pair (e.g. 99 & 101) has a product that is less than 10 0 2 100^2 . In fact, each pair from the numerator will be one less than the corresponding pair from the denominator: ( a 1 ) × ( a + 1 ) = a 2 1 (a-1) \times (a+1) = a^2 - 1 .

George Botev - 5 years, 5 months ago

(1/2) denominator is greator than numerator but its value is not zero.

Himanshu Goyal - 5 years, 5 months ago
James Clark
Jan 16, 2016

Note that for all 1<m<n, (n-m)(n+m) < n^2, which implies that (n-m)(n+m)/n^2 <1. Letting n = 100, we can pair all terms in the product set by letting m vary from 1 to 99, ( 1 % × 199 % 1\% \times 199\% , 2 % × 198 % 2\% \times 198\% etc). All product pairs are less than 1, and only two terms are left unaccounted for, 100% and 200%, whose product is 2. Clearly the product of all the other pair must be less than 1 since they are all less than 1 individually. So the only question is if the product of the pairs is 0.5 or greater. If even 1 of the product pairs is less than 0.5, then the product of the pairs must also be less than 0.5, and the pair ( 1 % × 199 % 1\% \times 199\% ) easily satisfies this, therefore the product of all terms is less than 1, implying that the floor of the total product is zero.

Goh Choon Aik
May 9, 2016

Using logic, we find that there is a larger number of 'divide by 100's, as there are 200 numbers, than there are multiplying by 100 or more. Therefore the floor of the equation is 0.

The non-floor answer to the problem above is estimated at 7.8865787 x10^-26, which is way less than 1. So floor answer is 0.

Alexander Dekker
Apr 4, 2016

There are a lot of great solutions already written, but I'll try to do it using math as simple as possible: . 01 . 02 . 03... 1.99 2 .01*.02*.03...*1.99*2 =

( . 01 2 ) ( . 02 1.99 ) ( . 03 1.98 ) . . . ( 1 1.01 ) (.01*2)*(.02*1.99)*(.03*1.98)...*(1*1.01)

Which is fairly obviously the product of a handful of numbers slightly bigger than one and a lot of numbers between zero and one: a product which is probably close to zero, but if we want to be even more sure, this product also equals

( . 01 2 1 1.01 ) ( . 02 1.99 . 99 1.02 ) ( . 03 1.98 . 98 1.03 ) . . . ( . 49 1.50 . 50 1.49 ) (.01*2*1*1.01)*(.02*1.99*.99*1.02)*(.03*1.98*.98*1.03)...*(.49*1.50*.50*1.49)

Intuition, common mathematical patterns, or just running some numbers in our head lead to the conclusion that .49 * .50 * 1.49 * 1.50 has the greatest magnitude of these combinations;

. 49 . 50 1.49 1.50 ( 1 2 ) 2 ( 3 2 ) 2 = 9 16 .49*.50*1.49*1.50≈(\frac{1}{2})^2(\frac{3}{2})^2=\frac{9}{16}

In other words, our number is the product of 49 numbers between 0 and 9 16 \frac{9}{16} - the floor of which will certainly be 0.

Prince Loomba
Jan 16, 2016

200!/100^200 Greatest integer = 0

200 ! 1 0 400 \frac{200!}{10^{400}} has in the denominator 400 400 trailling zeroes, and in the numerator less than 100 100 trailling zeroes, so 200 ! 1 0 400 < 1 \frac{200!}{10^{400}}<1\rightarrow its floor function equals 0 0

Note that the number of trailing zeros doesn't tell you how large a number is. For example, 1234567890 is bigger than 1000000, even though the latter has many more trailing zeroes.

Calvin Lin Staff - 5 years, 5 months ago

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Really good observation, thank you :)

Hjalmar Orellana Soto - 5 years, 5 months ago

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