It's all about 9

How many positive integers between 1 1 and 100 100 (inclusive) have a multiple whose digits are all 9 9 ? (That is, a multiple of the form 999...9 999...9 ).


The answer is 40.

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2 solutions

Patrick Chatain
Apr 20, 2020

First note that any multiple of an even number will be even and thus cannot end in 9 9 and that any multiple of a multiple of 5 5 will end in 5 5 or 0 0 and cannot end in 9 9 either.

Now take any number N N such that ( N , 10 ) = 1 (N,10)=1 and consider the numbers { 1 0 0 , 1 0 1 , 1 0 N 1 } \{10^0,10^1,\dots 10^{N-1}\} . Since ( N , 10 ) = 1 (N,10)=1 then clearly none of these numbers is a multiple of N N (For N > 1 N>1 but this case is trivial).

Since there are N 1 N-1 possible non-zero remainders mod N N (namely 1 , 2 , , N 1 ) 1,2,\dots, N-1) and we have N N numbers, then two of the numbers must leave the same remainder mod N N . Say 1 0 i 1 0 j 10^i \equiv 10^j mod N N , for j > i j > i .

Then N 1 0 j 1 0 i N 1 0 i ( 1 0 j i 1 ) N \mid 10^j-10^i \implies N \mid 10^i\cdot(10^{j-i}-1)

But since ( N , 10 ) = 1 (N,10)=1 then N N has no common factor with 1 0 i 10^i . Hence N 1 0 j i 1 N \mid 10^{j-i}-1 , a number of the form 999 9 999\dots9

So any N N such that ( N , 10 ) = 1 (N,10)=1 has a multiple whose digits are all 9 9 (we have also found that the smallest such multiple has at most N 1 N-1 digits).

Finally there are 100 100 2 100 5 + 100 10 = 40 100-\frac{100}{2}-\frac{100}{5}+\frac{100}{10}=40 such integers between 1 1 and 100 100 .

Cantdo Math
Apr 21, 2020

We can write 999......999 as 1 0 n 1 10^n-1 .Now,for numbers coprime to 10 we can simply take n to be ϕ ( o f t h a t n u m b e r ) \phi (of that number) .

Hence,we only need to exclude multiples of 2 or 5.

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