1991 AIME Problems/Problem 4

Problem

The range of the sine function is $-1 \le y \le 1$ . It is periodic (in this problem) with a period of $\frac{2}{5}$ .

Thus, $-1 \le \frac{1}{5} \log_2 x \le 1$ , and $-5 \le \log_2 x \le 5$ . The solutions for $x$ occur in the domain of $\frac{1}{32} \le x \le 32$ . When $x > 1$ the logarithm function returns a positive value; up to $x = 32$ it will pass through the sine curve. There are exactly 10 intersections of five periods (every two integral values of $x$ ) of the sine curve and another curve that is $< 1$ , so there are $\frac{32}{2} \cdot 10 - 6 = 160 - 6 = 154$ values (the subtraction of 6 since all the “intersections” when $x < 1$ must be disregarded). When $y = 0$ , there is exactly $1$ touching point between the two functions: $\left(\frac{1}{5},0\right)$ . When $y < 0$ or $x < 1$ , we can count $4$ more solutions. The solution is $154 + 1 + 4 = \boxed{159}$ .