Problem:
How many ordered pairs of integers are there such that ?
Problem:
How many ordered pairs of integers are there such that ?
Pick one
Solution:
The answer is (E). Let us rewrite the expression as , that is, . is not a solution, so we can divide by and obtain the equation
Observing that we can further rewrite the equation in the form
so the solutions of the original equation correspond to the integer values of for which is an integer (indeed, for such values of there exists a unique choice of , given by the previous expression, that provides a solution of the original equation).
It follows that the solutions sought are as many as the divisors (positive and negative) of : these are all of the form with , hence there are exactly .