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Algebra Level 4

How many positive integers n n such that the decimal expansion of n ! n! ends with exactly 20152015 zeros.


The answer is 5.

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2 solutions

Personal Data
May 2, 2015

Using the formula for the number of trailing zeroes:

f ( n ) = i = 1 log 5 n n 5 i f\left( n \right) =\sum _{ i=1 }^{ \left\lfloor \log _{ 5 }{ n } \right\rfloor }{ \left\lfloor \frac { n }{ { 5 }^{ i } } \right\rfloor }

we can see that

f ( 5 k 1 ) < f ( 5 k ) = f ( 5 k + 1 ) = f ( 5 k + 2 ) = f ( 5 k + 3 ) = f ( 5 k + 4 ) < f ( 5 k + 5 ) f\left( 5k-1 \right) <f\left( 5k \right) =f\left( 5k+1 \right) =f\left( 5k+2 \right) =f\left( 5k+3 \right) =f\left( 5k+4 \right) <f\left( 5k+5 \right) .

So there are 5 5 numbers n n for which f ( n ) = x f\left( n \right) =x or in this case 20152015 20152015 .

To get a zero, you need a factor of 5, and a factor of 2. THERE ARE ENOUGH FACTORS OF 2. There are 5 distinct numbers that have x as their greatest multiple of 5 in their factorial. Sorry for bad english.

Moderator note:

This solution has been marked wrong. How did you make the conclusion that "here are 5 distinct numbers that have x as their greatest multiple of 5 in their factorial" simply because "THERE ARE ENOUGH FACTORS OF 2"?

The conclusion is incorrect. Posing a much simpler question. "How many positive integers n n have exactly 5 trailing zeros in n ! n! ". By, the logic given, one may conclude that there are 5 numbers. However, actually no such n n exists. 24 ! 24! has 4 trailing zeros, while 25 ! 25! has 6 trailing zeros.

Janardhanan Sivaramakrishnan - 6 years, 1 month ago

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