Maths Olympiad Prep

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Number theory Difficulty 5.6 AIME, harder Prove it Italy

Problem:

Determine the maximum positive integer kk such that k2k^{2} divides n!(n6)!\frac{n !}{(n-6) !} for every n>6n>6.

Solution

Solution:

The answer is 12. Let N=n!(n6)!=(n5)(n4)(n3)(n2)(n1)nN=\frac{n !}{(n-6) !}=(n-5)(n-4)(n-3)(n-2)(n-1) n.

Let us first look for the maximum qq such that qq divides N,nN, \forall n. Among six consecutive integers, three are divisible by 2, and among these three, one is certainly divisible by 4. Hence 242^{4} divides NN. Among six consecutive integers there are two integers divisible by 3. Hence 323^{2} divides NN. Among six consecutive integers, only one of them is divisible by 5. Hence 5 divides NN. Therefore
q24325 q \geq 2^{4} \cdot 3^{2} \cdot 5
Since we are looking for the maximum qq such that qq divides N,nN, \forall n, let us consider n1=7,n2=13n_{1}=7, n_{2}=13. Certainly qq divides both N1N_{1} and N2N_{2}, from which it follows that
q divides MCD(N1,N2) q \text{ divides } \operatorname{MCD}\left(N_{1}, N_{2}\right)
One finds that N1=234567,N2=8910111213N_{1}=2 \cdot 3 \cdot 4 \cdot 5 \cdot 6 \cdot 7, N_{2}=8 \cdot 9 \cdot 10 \cdot 11 \cdot 12 \cdot 13. Then MCD(N1,N2)=24325\operatorname{MCD}\left(N_{1}, N_{2}\right)=2^{4} \cdot 3^{2} \cdot 5. Now, from 1 and 2 we deduce that q=24325q=2^{4} \cdot 3^{2} \cdot 5. Wishing to extract from qq the largest square, we find that k2=2432k^{2}=2^{4} \cdot 3^{2}, that is k=12k=12.

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Source: MathNet, licensed CC-BY-4.0. Statement translated into English from it; metadata (topic, difficulty) added by this project.