What will be left?

Find the least positive integer 'n' such that when its leftmost digit is deleted, the resulting number is 1 57 \frac{1}{57} of the original number. Here deleted is in this sense-if 1 is deleted from 167, 67 is the resulting number. All the numbers mentioned are in base-10 notation

(This is from a problem solving book which didn't give any solutions to the listed problems but listed them as challenges-For anyone who wants to checks it out, the source is this: Adventures In Problem Solving By Shailesh Shirali)


The answer is 7125.

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2 solutions

Sachetan Debray
May 26, 2020

Let the number be ( 1 0 k × x ) + y (10^k \times x) +y

Here x is a one-digit natural number and y is any natural number.

if we delete x, resulting number is y

=> y = 1 57 × [ ( 1 0 k × x ) + y ] y=\frac{1}{57}\times [(10^k \times x) +y]

=> 56 57 × y = 1 0 k 57 × x \frac{56}{57}\times y =\frac{10^k}{57}\times x

=> 56 × y = 1 0 k × x 56\times y=10^k\times x

Now, see that x is a 1-digit number. If x is not equal to 7, then RHS will not be divisible by 7.

But LHS will still be divisible by 7 as 56 × k 56\times k is divisible by 7

This is a contradiction, thus x = 7 x=7 .

Thus 8 × y = 1 0 k 8\times y = 10^k

thus 8 divides 1 0 k 10 ^k completely

thus minimum value of k is 3

At k = 3 , y = 125 k=3, y=125

Hence n = 7125 n=7125 (n was the original number)

This is the least value of n.

For k=4, 5, 6 and so on, n=71250, 712500 and so on.

Nice! Can you please send me the book you mentioned in PDF? If not, please only tell the name, I will find it. Thanks!

Vinayak Srivastava - 1 year ago

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The book's name is Adventures in Problem Solving by Shailesh Shirali. The last chapter called Desserts has problems without any solutions. A lot of them are quite fun to solve. I can't give you the PDF as I only had the hard copy. And I doubt it's available as open source. Nevertheless, you can try and hunt for it online. If you can't find a PDF, you can order it online. The book is worth buying. Thanks!

Sachetan Debray - 1 year ago

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Thanks, I will search it online, but I don't want to buy more books as my school syllabus is pretty large!

Vinayak Srivastava - 1 year ago

A simple Java code will do the trick (I'm aware this is not how the question was intended to be solved).

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class test {
    public static void main (String[] args) throws java.lang.Exception {
        int x = 10;
        boolean found = false;
        while (!found) {
            String temp = Integer.toString(x);
            temp = temp.substring(1);
            int y = Integer.parseInt(temp);
            if (y*57 == x && !found) {
                found = true;
            } else {
                x++;
            }
        }
        System.out.println(x);
    }
}

The output of this code when run gives us 7125.

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