2020 AMC 10B Problems/Problem 25

Problem

Let denote the number of ways of writing the positive integer as a productwhere , the are integers strictly greater than , and the order in which the factors are listed matters (that is, two representations that differ only in the order of the factors are counted as distinct). For example, the number can be written as , , and , so . What is ?

Solution

Note that . Since there are at most six not nexxessarily distinct factors multiplying to , we have six cases:

: We see that there is way, merely . : This way, we have the in one slot and in another, and symmetry. The four other 's leave us with ways and symmetry doubles us so we have . : We have as our baseline. We need to multiply by in places, and see that we can split the remaining three powers of 2 in a manner that is 3-0-0, 2-1-0 or 1-1-1. A 3-0-0 split has ways of happening (24-2-2 and symmetry; 2-3-16 and symmetry), a 2-1-0 split has ways of happening (due to all being distinct) and a 1-1-1 split has ways of happening (6-4-4 and symmetry) so in this case we have ways. : We have as our baseline, and for the two other 's, we have a 2-0-0-0 or 1-1-0-0 split. The former grants us ways (12-2-2-2 and symmetry and 3-8-2-2 and symmetry) and the latter grants us also ways (6-4-2-2 and symmetry and 3-4-4-2 and symmetry) for a total of ways. : We have as our baseline and one place to put the last two: on another two or on the three. On the three gives us ways due to symmetry and on another two gives us ways due to symmetry. Thus, we have ways. : We have and symmetry and no more twos to multiply, so by symmetry, we have ways.

Thus, adding, we have .

~kevinmathz

See Also

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