Problem of the Week 830

Parenthetical Integers

Parentheses can be inserted into the expression

1/2/3/4/5/6/7/8/9/10/11

to produce a large collection of numbers, some of which are integers. What is the quotient of the largest of these integers divided by the smallest?

The expression looks better with \div, the horizontal division sign.

1÷2÷3÷4÷5÷6÷7÷8÷9÷10÷11

[If your Web browser supports the ISO 8859-1 Latin 1 character set (They're all supposed to!) you'll see horizontal division signs on the previous line. -Jeff]

Source: This problem was suggessted by Harold Reiter (UNC-Charlotte).

© Copyright 1997 Stan Wagon. Reproduced with permission.