Mathematical Food for Thought

 
 
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    Serves a Daily Special and an All-You-Can-Eat Course in Problem Solving. Courtesy of me, Jeffrey Wang.
 
Finished Product. Topic: Number Theory. Level: Olympiad. January 23rd, 2006

Problem: (1970 IMO – #1) Find all positive integers n such that the set \{n,n+1,n+2,n+3,n+4,n+5\} can be partitioned into two subsets so that the product of the numbers in each subset is equal.

Solution: We claim that no such n exists.

First, suppose one of the elements has a prime factor  > 5 . Then clearly none of the other elements has the same prime factor; therefore, any partition will create one set with that prime factor and one without it. Hence none of the elements has a prime factor  > 5 .

Now take the set modulo  5 . By the same argument above, there must be two elements divisible by  5 . But the first and last are the only two elements that differ by  5 , so  n \equiv n+5 \equiv 0 \pmod{5} .

Consider the elements n+1, n+2, n+3, n+4. Two of them can be divisible by  2 . Of the remaining two, however, only one can be divisible by  3 (since they differ by  2 ). Hence there exists an element that is divisible by neither 2, 3, nor 5. Then it must have a prime factor  > 5 , which gives us a contradiction.

So no such  n exist, as desired. QED.

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Practice Problem: Find an  n such that the above condition holds for the set  \{n,n+1,\ldots,n+7\} or prove that none exist.

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