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2012 AMC 10A PROBLEMS/PROBLEM 25

2012 AMC 10A

Problems/Problem 25
Contents [hide]
1 Problem
2 Solution 1
3 Solution 2
3.1 Appendix
4 Solution 3
5 Solution 4
6 Video Solution by Richard Rusczyk
7 See Also

Problem
Real numbers , , and are chosen independently
and at random from the interval for some
positive integer . The probability that no two of , ,

and are within 1 unit of each other is greater than .

What is the smallest possible value of ?

Solution 1
Since are all reals located in , the
number of choices for each one is continuous so we
use geometric probability.
WLOG(Without loss of generality), assume that
. Then the set of points
is a tetrahedron, or a triangular pyramid. The point
distributes uniformly in this region. If this is
not easy to understand, read Solution II.
The altitude of the tetrahedron is and the base is an
isosceles right triangle with a leg length . The

volume is , as shown in the first figure in red.

Now we will find the region with points satisfying

, , .
Since , we have ,
.
The region of points satisfying the condition
is shown in the second figure in black. It is a
tetrahedron, too.

The volume of this region is .

So the probability is .

Substituting with the values in the choices, we find

that when , , when ,

. So .

So the answer is .

Solution 2
Because , , and are chosen independently and at
random from the interval , which means that ,
, and distributes uniformly and independently in
the interval . So the point distributes
uniformly in the cubic , as shown in
the figure below. The volume of this cubic is .

As we want to find the probablity of the incident

, we
should find the volume of the region of points such
that , , and
.
Now we will find the region

.
The region can be generated by cutting off 3 slices
corresponding to , , and
, respectively, from the cubic.
After cutting off a slice corresponding to ,
we get two triangular prisms, as shown in the figure.

In order to observe the object clearly, we rotate the

object by the axis, as shown.
We can draw the slice corresponding to
on the object.

After cutting off the slice corresponding to

, we have 4 pieces left.

After cutting off the slice corresponding to

, we have 6 congruent triangular prisms.

Here we draw all the pictures in colors in order to

explain the solution clearly. That does not mean that
the students should do it in the examination. They can
draw a figure with lines only, as shown below.

Every triangular pyramid has an altitude and a

base of isoceless right triangle with leg length ,
so the volume is . Then the volume of the
region

is = .

So the probability of the incident is =

Then we can get the answer the same way as Solution

I.

The answer is .

If there is no choice for selection, we can also find the

minimum value of the integer if we do not substitute
by the possible values one by one.

Let , i.e., , so

, or , hence

Now we will estimate the value of without a

calculator.

Since = , so =

= .

Now we would get the approximation of and .

In order to avoid compicated computation, we get the
approximation with one decimal digit only.

Estimation of .

Since , so .
The mean of 1 and 1.5 with one decimal digit is about
1.3 .
As , so
.
The mean of 1 and 1.3 with one decimal digit is about
1.2.
As , so
.

Estimation of .

As , so , then
.
As , so
.
The mean of 1.5 and 1.69 with one decimal digit is
about 1.6.
As

, so .

Then

, i.e., ,

As , So the minimal value

of integer is 10.

Appendix
This solution is motivated by the suggestive formula

The problem generalizes easily to -dimensional real

space . In the general -dimensional case, we are
asked to find the probability that a randomly chosen -
tuple satisfies
for all . To avoid repetition, let us say that
is spaced-out if for all
.
Let be the -dimensional hyper-cube of side length
:

Then has volume . Let be the set of spaced-

out -tuples . The desired probability is
Vol .
The set of -tuples such that there exist
distinct indices such that has volume ,
so we may restrict our attention to -tuples such that
for all .
Further, the condition that is spaced-out
is "invariant upon permuting the indices"; in other
words, if is a permutation of the set of indices
, then is spaced-out if and
only if is spaced-out. Therefore,
we may consider the set of spaced-out -tuples
which additionally satisfy
. Let us denote this set by . This
condition is equivalent to

Let us choose new variables for

. This change of variables is just a
translation of each by the vector
; in the above solutions, it
corresponds to taking the 6 tetrahedrons and gluing
them together to form a cube.
We now compute the volume of the set of
which satisfy
. As above, we can disregard any
such that for some . Given
any such that for all , there
exists exactly one permutation of the indices
such that . Since
there are permutations of , the desired

volume is equal to times the volume of the -

dimensional hyper-cube of side length ,

which is . Hence has volume

as well and has volume

. Hence the desired probability is

Solution 3
If , , and are separated by at least one, then by
subtracting the minimum space between the three
variables (which is ), , , and can be chosen
randomly in the interval . The probability is

hence is the minimum value

in the answer choices that satisfies this inequality.

Solution 4
Imagine Points , , as the "starting points" of three
"blocks" of real numbers that have length . We are
just trying to find the probability that those three
"blocks" do not overlap. To do this we can set each
unit of into equal little increments, and take the
limit of the probability as approaches . (This is
because there are indefinitely many real numbers in a
given interval.) We see that the total number of
arrangements for the three blocks of , without
considering the rule that no two blocks shall overlap is
. We see that the number of ways to
arrange the three blocks such that no three of them

are overlapping is simply . Taking

the limit as approaches infinity, we obtain our

closed form to be Dividing

leading coefficients, we obtain

. Solving the inequality , we get the

least value of as .
-fidgetboss_4000

Video Solution by Richard Rusczyk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOtyh9qycrI

See Also
2012 AMC 10A (Problems • Answer Key •
Resources)
Preceded by Followed by
Problem 24 Last Problem
1 • 2 • 3 • 4 • 5 • 6 • 7 • 8 • 9 • 10 • 11 • 12 •
13 • 14 • 15 • 16 • 17 • 18 • 19 • 20 • 21 • 22
• 23 • 24 • 25
All AMC 10 Problems and Solutions

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