a) If is a power of , prove that all the elements of have different remainders modulo .
b) If is not a power of , prove that there exist two elements of with the same remainder modulo .
a) If is a power of , prove that all the elements of have different remainders modulo .
b) If is not a power of , prove that there exist two elements of with the same remainder modulo .
Let and be positive integers such that . Sums and give the same remainder modulo if and only if
i.e. if and only if is divisible by .
Notice that and give a different remainder modulo .
a) Let . Then , and since and give a different remainder modulo , one of them has to be divisible by .
On the other hand, clearly , and we have , so none of those numbers is divisible by .
We conclude that distinct elements of the set give different remainders modulo .
b) Let where is odd.
We have to choose and , such that
If we will choose them so that and , and if then we will choose them so that and .
In the first case solving the system we get and . Clearly . Since , it follows that
In the second case we get and . Again it is clear that . Finally, we check