Problem:
For positive integers , let be the smallest positive integer for which is divisible by 210, if such a positive integer exists, and otherwise. What is ?
Problem:
For positive integers , let be the smallest positive integer for which is divisible by 210, if such a positive integer exists, and otherwise. What is ?
Solution:
In order for , we must have , so we need only consider such . The number is divisible by 210 iff it is divisible by each of , and , and we can consider the order of modulo each modulus separately; will simply be the LCM of these orders. We can ignore the modulus 2 because order is always 1. For the other moduli, the sets of orders are
By the Chinese Remainder Theorem, each triplet of choices from these three multisets occurs for exactly one in the range , so the answer we seek is the sum of over in the Cartesian product of these multisets. For this table of LCMs is as follows:
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 6 | 6 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 6 | 6 |
| 2 | 2 | 2 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 |
| 4 | 4 | 4 | 12 | 12 | 12 | 12 |
| 4 | 4 | 4 | 12 | 12 | 12 | 12 |
This can also be computed by counting how many times each LCM occurs:
- 12 appears 16 times when and , for a contribution of ;
- 6 appears 14 times, 8 times when and and 6 times when and , for a contribution of ;
- 4 appears 8 times when and , for a contribution of ;
- 3 appears 2 times when and , for a contribution of ;
- 2 appears 7 times when and , for a contribution of ;
- 1 appears 1 time when , for a contribution of .
The result is again .