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Difficulty: 3/102022 IOQM 2022 (Q2)

In a parallelogram , the point on segment is taken such that and a point on segment is taken such that . If intersects at , find to the nearest integer.

Guide / Hint

Hint 1: Represent vectors along the sides as and . Note .

Hint 2: Use the condition that lies on segment to set up collinearity relations for .

Hint 3: Show that the ratio is given by and compute the sum of the reciprocal ratios.

Solution

Step 1: Let and . Then the diagonal is .

Step 2: We are given:

Step 3: The point lies on both and . Since , we can write:

Since lies on the line segment , by the section formula or collinearity of , there exists some such that:

Step 4: Equating the components of and :

Step 5: Add these two equations to eliminate :

Step 6: The ratio is exactly :

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    2022 IOQM 2022 Q2 - Olympiad Math Olympiad Question | Leminno