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Given a finite sequence of decimal digits $a_1,a_2,...,a_n$ prove that there exists a natural number $m$ such that decimal representation of $2^m$ starts with that sequence of digits.

Thanks for your help :)

the8thone
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2 Answers2

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Hint: $\log 2$ is irrational. What can you say about $ \{ n log 2 \}$, the fractional parts?

Calvin Lin
  • 68,864
  • the fractional parts of the sequence ${m \log 2}^{\infty}_{m=1}$ is ${ \log 2,\log 4,\log 8,\log 1.6, \log 3.2 , \ldots }$ which is a sequence of irrational numbers in $[0,1]$. If we know that this sequence is dense in $[0,1]$ we are done , but do we know that ?! – the8thone May 10 '14 at 14:26
  • @the8thone Great. Your guess is true, now show it. Use the pigeonhole principle. – Calvin Lin May 10 '14 at 15:01
  • I don't understand why are we done if the sequence ${m \log 2}$ is dense. Can you explain me, please? Thank you very much! – g.pomegranate Nov 19 '17 at 18:49
  • @g.pomegranate More generally, for irrational $r$, ${ m r } $ is dense. For example, by the pigeonhole principle applied to the first 101 values (pigeons) and 100 intervals $[\frac{n}{100}, \frac{n+1}{100} ]$ (hole), we can find 2 values of $mr$ which lie in the same interval. Their positive difference is a value of the form $m'r$, and lies within $[0, 0.01]$. So, we have a value in every 0.01 interval. Extend to $ 100 \rightarrow \infty$. – Calvin Lin Nov 27 '17 at 16:09
  • @CalvinLin Thank you very much! – g.pomegranate Nov 28 '17 at 18:44
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It is not a proof, just a try to find by approximations the first solutions, without the guarantee that they exist.

I tried a small script to select candidates which were submited next to a large digital computer for example manually.

The principle is the decimal approximation. The algorithm keeps only the 11 digits of a number hoping that the truncature will not affect a lot the most left digits. To extend the search , it selects also a few approximative matches, always under the target, since the truncature makes the result smaller.

There is an example of implementation for the target 999 , easy to adapt to other ones:

function main()
{
    var i, k = 68719476736,res="",res2="" ; /// begin with 2^36
    for( i=37 ; i < 50000 ; i++ )
    {
        k = 2* ((""+k).substr(0,7)) ;

        var kk = (""+k).substr(0,3) ;
        if( kk=="999" ) // if( kk=="998" || kk=="999" )
        {
            res +=( k+" ("+i+"), " ) ;
            res2 +=( "2^"+i+"," ) ;
        }
    }

    return res+"\n"+res2+"\n" ;
}


// scratchpad formalism to output the result as the last seen variable
// type CTRL L to run
var tto , ttt = main() ;
tto = ttt ;

Truncated numbers selected with the power in parenthesis :

$99912223808 (2621), 99928497088 (4757), 99944773024 (6893), $ $99961051568 (9029), 99977332768 (11165), 99993616640 (13301), $ $99905846016 (15922), $ $99922118264 (18058), 99938393032 (20194), 99954670632 (22330), $ $99970950824 (24466), 99987233664 (26602), $ $99915739784 (31359), 99932013584 (33495), 99948290144 (35631), $ $99964569264 (37767), 99980851144 (39903), $ $99997135584 (42039), 99909361920 (44660), 99925634840 (46796), $ $99941910296 (48932); ...$

After external tests, $2^{2621}$, $2^{4757}$, $2^{6893}$ , $2^{9029}$ , $2^{11165}$ seem to work well with the target of the test $999$.

edit : keeping 11 significative digits and testing only the target, I get directly the same begining of the sequence solution.