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HMMT February 2024 #0kyj

HMMT February 2024Hard

From module Cauchy-Schwarz Inequality

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Scale 0.5: Easiest math competition problems, often solvable even for early middle school students without experience. 1: Problems strictly for beginners, often at a moderate middle school level. 1.5: Problems for stronger beginner students, on the level of the middling problems in most middle school contests. 2: For motivated beginners, harder questions from the previous categories. 2.5: More advanced beginner problems, hardest questions from previous categories. 3: Early intermediate problems that require more creative thinking. 3.5: Tougher early intermediate problems that consistently stretch into higher-level creative thinking or conceptual knowledge. 4: Intermediate-level problems. 4.5: Upper intermediate problems approaching the upper bound for non-invitational sprint math competitions. 5: More difficult AIME problems or simple proof-based Olympiad-style problems. 6: High-level AIME-styled questions or introductory Olympiad-level questions. 7: Tougher Olympiad-level questions, may require more technical knowledge. 8: High-level Olympiad-level questions. 9: Expert Olympiad-level questions. 9.5: The hardest problems appearing on Olympiads which the strongest students could reasonably solve. 10: Historically notorious problems, generally unsuitable for even very hard competitions because they are exceedingly tedious, long, and difficult.
Cauchy-SchwarzIntegers

Problem

Problem: Let a1,a2,a3,…,a100a_{1}, a_{2}, a_{3}, \ldots, a_{100} be integers such that

a12+a22+a32+⋯+a1002a1+a2+a3+⋯+a100=100.\frac{a_{1}^{2}+a_{2}^{2}+a_{3}^{2}+\cdots+a_{100}^{2}}{a_{1}+a_{2}+a_{3}+\cdots+a_{100}}=100 .

Determine, with proof, the maximum possible value of a1a_{1}.

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