Inscribe a regular 2015-gon
into a circle of radius 1. Draw chords from one of the vertices of
to all the other vertices. Find the product of the lengths of these 2014 chords.
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We will use complex numbers. WLOG, let the vertex which you are drawing chords from be 1 . Let ω = e 2 0 1 5 2 π i , that is, the primitive 2015th root of unity. We will define a polynomial P ( x ) = x 2 0 1 4 + x 2 0 1 3 + . . . + x + 1 = ( x − ω ) ( x − ω 2 ) . . . ( x − ω 2 0 1 4 ) Thus, the product of the chords is just ∣ 1 − ω ∣ ⋅ ∣ 1 − ω 2 ∣ ⋅ . . . ⋅ ∣ 1 − ω 2 0 1 4 ∣ = ∣ P ( 1 ) ∣ = 2 0 1 5
We can generalize this to an n -gon and we will see that the product is just n .