2017 USAJMO Problems/Problem 1
Contents
[hide]Problem
Prove that there are infinitely many distinct pairs of relatively prime positive integers and such that is divisible by .
Solution 1
Let and . We see that . Therefore, we have , as desired.
(Credits to mathmaster2012)
Solution 2
Let be odd where . We have so This means that and since x is odd, or as desired.
Solution 3
Because problems such as this usually are related to expressions along the lines of , it's tempting to try these. After a few cases, we see that is convenient due to the repeated occurrence of when squared and added. We rewrite the given expressions as: After repeatedly factoring the initial equation,we can get: Expanding each of the squares, we can compute each product independently then sum them: Now we place the values back into the expression: Plugging any positive integer value for into yields a valid solution, because there is an infinite number of positive integers, there is an infinite number of distinct pairs .
-fatant
Solution 4
Let and , where leaves a remainder of when divided by .We seek to show that because that will show that there are infinitely many distinct pairs of relatively prime integers and such that is divisible by .
Claim 1: . We have that the remainder when is divided by is and the remainder when is divided by is always . Therefore, the remainder when is divided by is always going to be .
Claim 2: We know that and , so the remainder when is divided by is always going to be .
Claim 3: Trivial given claim .
~AopsUser101
Solution 5
I claim , always satisfies above conditions.
Note: We could have also substituted 2n with 2^n or 4n, 8n, ... any sequence of numbers such that they are all even. The proof will work the same.
Proof:
Since there are infinitely many integers larger than or equal to 2, there are infinitely many distinct pairs .
We only need to prove:
We can expand using binomial theorem. However, since , all the terms (with more than 2 powers of) when evaluated modulo equal to 0, and thus can be omitted. We are left with the terms: , which is divisible by .
The proof is complete.
-AlexLikeMath
Solution 6 (Motivation for Solution)
Note that To get rid of the part we can use the sum of powers factorization. However, must be odd for us to do this. If we assume that is odd, Because and are relatively prime, cannot divide Thus, we have to show that there exists an integer such that for odd Suppose that To keep the powers small, we try for small values of We can find that does not work. works though, as and Because is odd, is relatively prime to Thus, is a solution for positive There are infinitely many possible values for so the proof is complete. ~BS2012
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See also
2017 USAJMO (Problems • Resources) | ||
First Problem | Followed by Problem 2 | |
1 • 2 • 3 • 4 • 5 • 6 | ||
All USAJMO Problems and Solutions |