Problem Archive

Suppliers 'A' and 'B' provided the following numbers of products for the luxury hamper market:

Product'A''B'
Beluga Caviar5248640
Christmas Cake13121888
Gammon Joint26243776
Vintage Port57603776
Champagne Truffles39365664

Although the suppliers try very hard to ship their goods in perfect condition, there is inevitably some spoilage - i.e. products gone bad.

The suppliers compare their performance using two types of statistic:

To their surprise, the suppliers found that each of the five per-product spoilage rates was worse (higher) for 'B' than for 'A' by the same factor (ratio of spoilage rates), m>1; and yet, paradoxically, the overall spoilage rate was worse for 'A' than for 'B', also by a factor of m.

There are thirty-five m>1 for which this surprising result could have occurred, the smallest of which is 1476/1475.

What's the largest possible value of m?
Give your answer as a fraction reduced to its lowest terms, in the form u/v.

Solution
No solution yet. Write yours at solutions/s236.md.
Problems sourced from Project Euler · Non-commercial & educational use only · CC BY-NC-SA 4.0